


Leave Me Shakin'

by LikeSatellites



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Blood Magic, Familiars, M/M, Multi, Past minor character death, Polyamory, ateez coven, some vague body horror, the one where woosan accidentally summon a human familiar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-01-20 16:27:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21284687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LikeSatellites/pseuds/LikeSatellites
Summary: “Confidence comes from excelling,” Wooyoung exclaims defensively.“Or does excelling come from confidence?” San counters.Wooyoung wriggles beneath him, trapped in the heat of the blankets. “You’re so mean to me! On this the morn’ of my fifth attempt at conjuring a familiar! What if my anger seeps into the spell and conjures something really disgusting like a millipede?”San blows a raspberry on Wooyoung’s neck and climbs off him. “Then that’ll be your own fault, and you will have to live with your many-legged spirit-friend for all eternity.”(Or: The ATEEZ coven gathers to witness as Wooyoung attempts once again to summon a familiar, prepared for an inevitable failure once more. Things go awry...))
Relationships: Choi San/Jung Wooyoung, Choi San/Jung Wooyoung/Kang Yeosang, Choi San/Kang Yeosang, Jeong Yunho/Song Mingi, Jung Wooyoung/Kang Yeosang, Kim Hongjoong/Park Seonghwa
Comments: 90
Kudos: 691





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hey ATINY! It's me...again. Back with another WIP. If you follow me on twitter, you know I've been PUMPED about this AU for a bit, so I hope y'all enjoy!! I am deep in WooSanSang feels.

Wooyoung wakes to an empty bed and San doing Sun Salutations by the open window. The branches of the nearby trees are arching inward toward him through the window frame. San’s eyes are closed, but Wooyoung is sure he feels them. 

“It’s cold,” Wooyoung whines, pulling the blankets inward and rolling himself up tightly in them. 

“It’s fall,” San replies, stretching his arms overhead and breathing out deeply. The tree branches go lax and droop back into place. “You just run hotter.”

“If you’re going to talk dirty to me, can you do it a little closer?” Wooyoung drawls, rolling his blanket burrito body to the edge of the bed so he can smirk and smolder at San where he’s still standing by the open window. 

San rolls his eyes but obediently crawls over Wooyoung’s carefully wrapped body and places kisses on his cheekbones, nose, forehead, and chin. 

“You feeling okay?” Wooyoung asks, wanting to reach up to cradle San’s cheek in his palm but his arms are trapped beneath the blankets.

San nods but glances warily out the open window. “I think it’s just the Moon.”

“It’s a Full Moon this year. The Harvest Moon,” Wooyoung says, as if San doesn’t know. “Do you think everyone will show up tonight?”

“They should. I haven’t heard anything from Yunho, which I have to assume means nothing went awry in their travel plans. You know how Mingi gets with teleportation magicks.”

Wooyoung mentally flashes back to the time Mingi appeared on their front lawn, fully nude, all body hair scorched off. He giggles to himself, and San lightly smacks his chest. 

“Don’t be mean. He was very traumatized.”

“Not my fault he mispronounced his incantation. I’ve been trying to get him to switch to potions for years. Much less chance of tongue-twister-related scorchings.”

San smiles down at Wooyoung and runs his fingers lightly through the silver hair that’s fallen into his eyes. “Not everyone is as good at trusting their magick as you are, my confident bratty babe.”

“Confidence comes from excelling,” Wooyoung exclaims defensively. 

“Or does excelling come from confidence?” San counters.

Wooyoung wriggles beneath him, trapped in the heat of the blankets. “You’re so mean to me! On this the morn’ of my fifth attempt at conjuring a familiar! What if my anger seeps into the spell and conjures something really disgusting like a millipede?”

San blows a raspberry on Wooyoung’s neck and climbs off him. “Then that’ll be your own fault, and you will have to live with your many-legged spirit-friend for all eternity.”

Wooyoung scoffs and rolls out of bed to launch himself at San’s bare back. San deftly sweeps Wooyoung up around him, gripping his thighs and hefting him piggy-back toward the stairs. 

“You would also have to live with the many-legged spirit for all eternity, you know,” Wooyoung reminds him, licking at San’s ear as he carts Wooyoung to the kitchen, where their family-sized cauldron sits stewing the beginnings of Wooyoung’s annual conjuring spell. “Since you’re stuck with me and all.”

“I don’t mind bugs,” San says casually, dropping Wooyoung atop the butcher-block kitchen island. 

“That one time one of our honey bees was trapped in the bathroom with you, you nearly cried,” Wooyoung points out, kicking out to toe at the back of San’s sweater while he leans over the cauldron. 

“I was worried for him.”

“Mhm. Right, right,” Wooyoung scoffs, eyeing the purplish surface of his bubbling conjuring spell. “Don’t you want to try this year too, maybe?”

San freezes with the wooden ladle in his hand, back rigid. “I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

“Maybe it could help, you know? Maybe it could--”

“Woo,” San says, sounding tired and cold in the way Wooyoung hates. “Don’t, please. I’ve resigned myself to being alone. It’s fine.”

“You’re not alone,” Wooyoung whines softly, gripping his kneecaps in his palms and squeezing, for something to do with his hands. “You know that, right?”

San turns, placing the ladle back into its wrought-iron stand by the cauldron. “I know, baby. I know you’re with me. And all our friends. But it’s different. It’s like...as witches, our whole lives we’re waiting for our magic to make sense. We’re just waiting for a sign that our magic is good and natural and alive.”

“And it sucks when you never get that sign,” Wooyoung finishes with a huff. “You don’t have to explain it to me, Sannie. I’m 25, and I have nothing to show for my magic either. And I’ve tried for so long. You think I don’t understand what it’s like to feel lost and--and--?”

“Hey,” San coos, stepping in between Wooyoung’s legs and pressing his face to the crook of Wooyoung’s neck, breathing him in. “I know. I’m sorry. You’re right. I know. And you deserve it so much, Woo. More than anyone I know, you deserve to know that your magic is wonderful and good and pure.”

“I don’t know about  _ pure _ ,” Wooyoung says slyly, tipping his head back in the way that exposes the tan length of his throat for San’s kisses. San obliges. “Remember that time we were visiting the old woman who grows those poppies that never wilt? Eden asked us to gather a bundle and bring them back to class, and we…”

“Fucked in a tree on the way back and then dropped them all over the forest floor because you have no control over your body when you’re being fucked? Yeah, I remember. We had to write out the spell for submission to magickal authority 100 times.”

“That was the first time, wasn’t it?”

“Don’t remind me. Our first time was in a  _ tree _ .”

“Seems fitting for us, I think,” Wooyoung says, wrapping his legs around San’s waist and tugging their hips flush together. 

“Because we’re a dirty, filthy mess?”

“Mmm,” Wooyoung growls, leaning in to nip at San’s lower lip, “speaking of dirty, filthy messes, I’d really enjoy a--”

“Y’all better not be fucking,” comes Hongjoong’s voice from the front door, his boot hovering in the doorway, where he’d clearly physically kicked it open. “We just traveled so damn far, and Mingi puked when we were flying over those totally spirit-infested tide pools a couple miles west, and I’m worried they put a curse on us.”

Wooyoung whines as San steps away to let their friends inside. “We said be here at  _ three _ .”

Hongjoong comes inside, brushing debris from his cloak before magicking it up onto a hook on the wall. His hair is bright red now, making him look less like a witch and more like the lovechild of a siren and a fae. Wooyoung used to envy his delicate features. Always wanted to feel just the slightest bit  _ smaller _ . 

Seonghwa trails in after, clearly on trunk duty as he drags their luggage behind him over the threshold of the house. The house has to sniff the bag before it will let him inside. Seonghwa’s hawk familiar, simply and aptly named Angry Bird (AngBi for short), is glaring at Hongjoong’s butterfly, Aurora, as she dances pink glittering magick around his head. 

“One day that bird is gonna devour Aurora, and none of us will blame him,” Jongho says, entering next with Mingi on his back as Yunho hauls the rest of the bags inside. The house shudders at Mingi’s presence, sending Wooyoung nervous magickal pings through his spine. 

“Don’t worry,” he coos, touching a hand to the wall. “He only smells like that because he barfed. He doesn’t pose me a threat.” The house feels unsure, but then goes calm, especially when Jongho sits down and immediately starts feeding her healing magick with his palms on the wood plank floor. “You spoil her,” Wooyoung tsks. 

“I can literally feel that your guest bathroom sink is broken and has been for  _ weeks _ ,” Jongho spits, rubbing the floor soothingly. “Don’t worry. A competent owner will restore you.”

“If you’re so great at homeownership, why are you still living in that  _ cave _ ?” San teases.

Jongho glares menacingly up at San, who is helping Yunho lay Mingi out on the kitchen table to heal his nausea. “Student loans!” Jongho cries bitterly. “And not all of us inherited magickal shacks in the woods from our ancestors.”

The house grumbles beneath their feet. Jongho pats the floor. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to call you a shack. You’re a beautiful abode. The most magnificent abode of all.”

Wooyoung rolls his eyes and hovers nervously beside Hongjoong and Seonghwa as they peer down into his cauldron. “Does it seem okay? I mean, I know it always  _ seems _ okay. And then, you know, never works. But still. It’s okay?”

“It looks right to me,” Hongjoong says, shrugging. “It always looks right to me.”

“Me too,” Seonghwa adds. “Are you healthy? No ominous nightmares this past week or anything?”

Wooyoung shakes his head. Briefly, he ponders the dream he had two nights ago. He was chained to a large white box in a dark nothingness. Not a room, just an expansive darkness.

And not just a single chain, either. A monstrous number of chains. Thick, heavy ropes of chains on his arms and thighs and waist. More than simply immobile. Actively feeling the impossible heft of all that metal. 

He considers bringing it up but then assures himself it was probably a weird kink dream. Like that time he dreamt of San inside a really big cup noodle. The others hadn’t liked it when he brought up the cup noodle dream. 

“I read somewhere that blood might help,” Wooyoung says, waving a hand over the cauldron and wafting the steam. “Like, fresh blood, aside from the blood that’s been stewing in there. Like, more of my essence in the moment, you know?”

Seonghwa considers that a minute. “AngBi came to me before I even drank mine. I breathed it in, and he was there, flapping his gigantic wings in my face.”

“Aurora came out my mouth,” Hongjoong declares, as if they hadn’t all been there when Hongjoong doubled over, mouth agape, sounding like a cat hacking up a wad of spit and fur, before Aurora fell through his parted lips and into his cupped palms. “If your familiar is anything bigger than her, though, that’s probably not gonna be good. I really thought I was gonna die. I felt her wings beating against my uvula. Like deepthroating a penis that won’t stop rapidly jiggling.”

“Okay, I officially hate this conversation,” Jongho says, having finished ‘healing’ the house, running his dusty hands under the kitchen faucet. “Aurora came out your mouth because she knew you needed to be shut up, if even just for a moment.”

“She came from my heart,” Hongjoong protests, slapping a palm against his chest.

“If you think your heart is directly connected to your mouth, I swear to the Goddess--”

“Stop fighting over my potion,” Wooyoung whines, shoving them away from the cauldron and sending positive thoughts in its direction. “You’re going to taint it with your bickering. My familiar  _ has _ to be like Yunho’s. A good boy like Pancake.”

Pancake is currently trotting up and down Mingi’s body on the kitchen table, his paws glowing warm orange. He’s a corgi, little and fluffy and the color of hot maple syrup. Yunho thinks his familiar took this form for the hilarity, the great cosmic joke: Yunho being, you know, massive, and Pancake being...well... _ a short stack _ .

Mingi groans and runs a hand down Pancake’s back, probably grateful to no longer feel the effects of long-distance transport. The house feels calmer now too. He sits up, helping Pancake back to the floor as he stands and splashes water onto his face from the deep ceramic sink.

“You guys are so lucky we’re a coven, or I would never make this kind of effort. Especially since this will probably inevitably fa--” Yunho slaps a hand over Mingi’s mouth and laughs awkwardly. 

“He’s just grumpy,” Yunho says quickly. And, to Mingi: “Go take Mingi and have a nap upstairs, hm?” 

“Even after two years, I can’t believe your familiar decided its name is also Mingi,” Jongho laughs. 

Mingi walks over to his chest and waves a hand above it, unlocking the latch. “You were all yelling  _ Mingi! Mingi!  _ At him when he first was summoned--of course he thought that was his name!”

“We were yelling it at  _ you _ ,” Seonghwa corrects.

“You passed out cold immediately after you drank the potion,” San adds. “We thought maybe you’d accidentally poisoned yourself.”

“Yeah, well,” Mingi replies indignantly. “He didn’t understand.” 

The Other Mingi’s long furry arm hooks out from the chest, and he lifts himself up, little round brown snout peering up at them. He yawns, as if he hadn’t just been asleep for the entire duration of their travel day, and then they all watch him make a concerted effort to climb out of the chest, one achingly slow movement of limbs at a time. 

He’s a sloth. So it doesn’t go super well. 

Mingi gives up on allowing Mingi the Sloth to take his time. He scoops the clumsy mess of fur and hooked claws from the chest and carries him like a long-limbed hairy baby to the staircase. “Wake us when Wooyoung is ready to start.”

Jongho and San are preparing the ceremonial tea in a big mortar and pestle. San tosses the herbs inside, Jongho grinds. Jongho is the only one who can really get the consistency correct. Even with magick, none of them are strong enough to make that paste right. 

“Add some honey for flavor?” Wooyoung begs.

“The bitterness is what helps get the familiar out,” Seonghwa says, patting Wooyoung atop his head. 

Wooyoung grabs San by the back of his leather work apron. “Saaaannnieeeeee,” he whines, rubbing his face against San’s neck in the way San finds both endearing and annoying as fuck. “I don’t wanna barf in the ceremonial circle.”

“Hongjoong barfed,” Jongho points out.

“Excuse you,” Hongjoong huffs. “ _ Hongjoong _ expelled his familiar via his mouth. That’s not barfing.” He turns to Seonghwa for back up. Seonghwa bites the inside of his cheek and glances away.

Hongjoong, panicked, looks then at Aurora, who is perched on AngBi’s head on their little swing by the window. Aurora sends a flurry of pink and purple glittering magick into the air. 

_ You barfed _ , it reads.

Hongjoong wails at the ceiling. “No one told me that!”

“We didn’t want to taint your memory of the experience.”

“Like how sometimes humans poop when they give birth,” Jongho explains, grinding burdock root and leaves into the mixture calmly, arms bulging. 

Hongjoong is staring open-mouthed at them all. “In front of  _ Eden _ . I barfed in front of  _ Eden _ !”

“He thought it was funny,” San says, pulling little purple flowers from the dried vervain he’d hung up by the kitchen window that faces the garden. “Eden caught us fucking, so, like...what’s a little barf? He practically raised us all.”

Hongjoong silently walks to the couch and flops down out of view. There’s a long, low moan and then a little growling whine and then it goes quiet again.

“You know how much he idolizes Eden,” Seonghwa hisses, protectively following after Hongjoong to the couch. 

Yunho and Jongho go to walk Pancake out in the garden, leaving San and Wooyoung in the kitchen alone.

San takes Wooyoung’s face in his hands, palms cold and fingertips even colder, in the way San’s hands tend to be these days. He touches their noses together. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” Wooyoung replies, giving a weak, small smile.

“I know you’re nervous, but it’s going to be fine. Either way, you know. It doesn’t reflect poorly on you to not have a familiar. Plenty of modern witches don’t have familiars, you know; it’s like, very antiquated or whatever. You know your strength, Woo. You can summon the sunlight with dance and just, like, make the bed when we’re both too lazy to do anything post-coitus.”

“I know it’s not the worst thing in the world. I just--feel like it’s there, you know? I feel it. Inside me. It wants to come out, but I can’t get it to show itself, and that’s frustrating. I feel...lonely?” Wooyoung offers, though he isn’t sure why lonely is the word that comes out. Wooyoung isn’t really lonely. 

Or maybe he is.

He isn’t  _ alone _ , but he is lonely. 

It feels like making waves.

Like, he’s the moon, and he’s trying to draw the Earth to him, to get closer, but all he’s doing is making waves. Every time he pulls, it’s the same result. Lonely. 

He’s still there, and he can see the Earth  _ right there _ , seemingly within his grasp, but it won’t come. He’s too small to make it come.

San’s brow furrows, making a little triangle of hurt between his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Wooyoung slaps him on the chest. “Stop. You’re not responsible for my feelings. They’re just feelings. It’s just pent-up magick inside, probably.”

“But I didn’t make you feel lonely...before. I wasn’t afraid of--”

“I know,” Wooyoung says, taking San’s hands and squeezing them. “You know I’m not going anywhere, right? You’re my first love.”

“Liar. We all know Eden was your first love.”

“Eden was everyone’s first love,” Hongjoong declares loudly, apparently having recovered from the barf-revelation. 

“Agree to disagree,” San says, shrugging and casually exclaiming, “Woo was 100% my first love.”

Wooyoung grabs onto San’s shirt and yanks him into a kiss. “You big stupid Cancer.”

“Ew!” Jongho yells from the garden door where he’s carrying Pancake inside, since apparently he’d fallen asleep after the brief 5 minute walk. His legs are quite short, so Wooyoung doesn’t blame him. He does hope his familiar has better stamina, though. 

“Yes, please avert your virgin eyes, Jongho,” Yunho says, wrapping his big-ass hands like a protective visor around Jongho’s entire face. 

“I’m 21,” Jongho replies easily. “And I’m not a virgin.”

Everything in the house suddenly shakes. There’s a powerful rattling beneath their feet. Everyone is quiet as the floorboards groan and shriek and the pipes hiss scalding steam.

Jongho presses a hand to the wall, leaning his head against it. “Forgive me, darling. I have urges.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Hongjoong huffs, rising up from the couch. “Before this day gets any weirder. Let’s please prepare the ceremonial circle.”

Seonghwa and Yunho go to fetch the Mingis from upstairs (a two-person job for sure), while San and Jongho start drawing the ceremonial circle out in white chalk lined with salt. Hongjoong takes Wooyoung to the small bathroom off the kitchen and has him bathe in scalding hot water with even more salt that burns Wooyoung’s skin. Hongjoong lights incense around him, wafting the smoke in all directions and muttering little spells. 

From outside, Wooyoung can hear Jongho yelling, “Open a damn window, Mingi! Burning sage with the windows closed--the demons are just running around in circles!”

Mingi squawks in protest, but then the sound of the squeaky rusted window hinges is heard. 

“There aren’t any demons here anyhow,” Mingi says. 

And then Wooyoung panics. He lifts out of the tub, dripping wet and naked and sprints past Hongjoong back into the living room. San isn’t there. Heart racing, Wooyoung peers around into the kitchen and sees San there teaching Jongho how to press flowers for scented oils to add to candles. He sighs, sagging against the wall in relief. 

San turns, meeting Wooyoung’s gaze and dragging his eyes down Wooyoung’s wet naked body. “Everything okay, dear?”

Jongho resolutely doesn’t turn from the wooden cutting board. “I ain’t even gonna look. I know  _ that _ voice. That’s San’s gross sex voice.”

Hongjoong sighs, exhausted, and drops the ceremonial white tunic over Wooyoung’s head from behind. “You’re all so messy. I wasn’t like this at  _ my _ \--”

Jongho opens his mouth, but Hongjoong glares at him and makes the spoon in his hand bend backward into a sad metal candy cane. Jongho shuts his mouth. Hongjoong smirks pleasantly while Jongho bends the spoon back into place with his bare hands.

“Like I said, friends: can we please get it together? The ceremony needs to be peaceful for the familiar to be summoned. It will sense any chaotic energies.”

“Maybe Mingi should leave then,” San observes, as they all witness Mingi wriggling with the burning sage through and around all the cluttered furniture that had been shoved aside to draw the ceremonial circle. Like a sad, clumsy little dance.

“Mingi actually has a very comforting aura,” Seonghwa says, watching Mingi fondly. “Like a really old tree.”

“That’s lovely,” Jongho replies, folding his arms over his chest and nodding sagely. “But maybe one of those ones with huge scary tree limbs that can walk from Lord of the Rings?”

“Ohh, an Ent,” Wooyoung cries excitedly, clapping his hands together. “Thank the Goddess he didn’t summon an Ent familiar.”

“That’s  _ because _ they’re not real,” Hongjoong sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose exasperatedly. “The sun’ll be down soon--we should start.”

“I’ll light the candles,” San says, touching Wooyoung’s cheek softly before moving away.

Hongjoong and Seonghwa lead Wooyoung to the center of the circle, laying him on his back. Seonghwa drapes a silk cloth over Wooyoung’s eyes. 

Around him, the others untie the curtains on the windows and light the candles. White, for purity. Black, for safety and protection. Pink, for affection and nurturance. 

The air smells smoky and warm. 

Someone brings a ceramic cup of the potion over and instructs Wooyoung to open his mouth. The liquid is hot and bitter enough to trigger Wooyoung’s gag reflex as it’s poured into his open mouth. He fights to swallow. 

Everything is dark and hot. Wooyoung allows himself to sink into the fog. 

The others start the chant, Hongjoong leading it with his calm directorial voice, as the Coven’s future Supreme. Wooyoung reaches inward, attempting once again to draw the presence inside him closer to the surface with that magickal gravity. 

_ I feel you _ , Wooyoung pleads, reaching out desperately. 

There’s a light, there behind his eyelids, dim and fluttering. 

Then there’s a soft humming. Wooyoung doesn’t recognize the voice. It sounds like something or someone trying to form words. A sad, weak sound, muffled without the speaker’s intent. Like trying to speak with no tongue. With lips sewn shut. 

Tears spring to Wooyoung’s eyes. He reaches harder.  _ I’m here. Please, I’m here _ .

The humming is urgent now. Distressed. 

Something is buzzing in Wooyoung’s ears. In his blood. Wooyoung thinks he might be levitating. His body, that is.

He can feel hands on him. On his physical body. Trying to tug him back down.

There’s nothing here inside him now. The light is barely there. Like a candle flame seen in the window of a lighthouse miles away. Wooyoung thinks he might be sobbing.

There are hands on his face now, pushing magick into him at his temples. Little zaps of energy to get him to open his eyes.

“Open your eyes.” It’s San.

At his touch, the light flares up, suddenly bright, so bright that it sears at Wooyoung’s external eyes somehow. He screams. Everything goes dark.

When he comes to, Wooyoung’s head is pillowed on San’s thigh. San is petting his hair gently and pushing little waves of warm magick into his skin. 

“It’s not here, is it?” Wooyoung whimpers, throat raw like he’d been screaming much longer than he remembers doing.

“Sorry, love,” San answers, fingers gentle on Wooyoung’s skin. “I felt its presence. I know it was here with us. But…”

Wooyoung curls up into San’s lap, hiding his face. Shame hisses up from his gut, sour and bitter and acrid on his tongue. He feels the urge to spit.

“Take me upstairs, please,” Wooyoung pleads, refusing to lift his head. 

San’s voice is calm and sweet as he tells the others to make themselves comfortable and to sleep wherever. No one bothers trying to comfort Wooyoung, which he appreciates. There’s nothing to be said. Nothing that can make this night less of an absolute shameful disaster. 

San tucks Wooyoung’s head under his chin and leads him up the stairs to their bed. Wooyoung strips quietly in the dark room, while San blows out the purifying candles on their bedside tables. 

The air is thick with smoke, but Wooyoung likes it. It’s warm and familiar, like the days spent with the other Coven boys in their boarding house, huddled around a hand-carved round table and trying to summon spirits. 

The air was always too thick with incense and smoke. Mingi and Hongjoong were always bickering about which scents to use. Which spirits would respond to frankincense or lavender. Which would be repelled by them. 

Eden would come down into the boarding-house basement at 4am, neither disappointed nor annoyed. He’d just sit there and watch, waiting for the inevitable failure. When the failure would come, he’d smile and say “another lesson, boys” like it was all part of the plan, and walk out.

Wooyoung wishes Eden were here to say it again. It might make Wooyoung’s failure feel less like an ending and more like part of some grand celestial design.

San gets into bed and immediately pulls Wooyoung in against him. His body is cold, always cold, but it helps Wooyoung settle to have his cheek pressed up on San’s bare chest. 

“Hey,” San whispers, rolling onto his side so they’re facing one another in the dark. San’s eyes are bright in the darkness. Sharp, almost feline.

Wooyoung wonders if it was a cat demon who took a home inside his boyfriend. 

“Can I say something? Don’t protest until I’m done, okay?” San says.

Wooyoung nods, not sure he’d be up to protesting anything at the moment with his mouth still burning and tasting like soot. 

“Maybe you should try the spell again without me here.”

Panic rises up in Wooyoung’s chest, urgent and terrifying, but San lays a hand over Wooyoung’s cheek. “Your familiar might be rejecting you because of me,” he sats. “It can probably sense that I’m… _ wrong _ .”

“You’re not wron—“

“Woo, love, please. We both know that’s not true. And we know how certain magicks respond to…darker forces.” 

Wooyoung looks at San and wonders how anything in the universe could consider San a dark force. San, who still sometimes feels the need to sleep with the same stuffed toy he’d had as a child. San, who found a baby grey squirrel out back once and bottle fed it until it was strong enough to be on its own. Who cried when he released it outside again.

“You aren’t a dark force,” Wooyoung murmurs, and nothing can convince him otherwise. “You’re so, so good. There’s just a…a parasite inside you. You wouldn’t call someone with cancer a dark force, would you? They’re just,” the word comes to him, and it feels right: “ _ afflicted _ .”

“Woo, I just want you to be happy. If summoning your familiar is what will make you happy, I will go to the other end of the planet to make that happen.”

Wooyoung sits up and shifts his body over San’s in the bed, under the blankets. San’s hands move to his hips automatically, and Wooyoung shifts, always ticklish without foreplay. “If you needing to be gone is the stipulation for getting this familiar into the world, then I don’t need it here.”

San pulls Wooyoung down against him firmly, and Wooyoung goes easily. Their lips meet clumsily in the dark, kissing each other’s noses and chins by accident before finding their footing. San’s skin is so cold, but Wooyoung feels hot, so so hot always like this. 

Having San’s attention focused on you like this is enough to make anyone sweat. 

When Wooyoung was fifteen, it was hard to even make eye contact with him. San was always this powerful force, throwing himself at everything confidently. Performing everything with this graceful skill and talent. 

Wooyoung was always enamored. 

San likes to tease that Eden was Wooyoung’s first love, but comparing the way he felt about Eden as a mentor and leader to the way he felt when San first touched their hands together and entwined their fingers and said ‘Goddess, you’re beautiful, Woo’ is apples and oranges. 

Loving San has always been enough. Always. 

“I’m going to protect you,” Wooyoung says, holding San’s face in his hands confidently and speaking low between kisses. “I’m going to keep you with me forever. You aren’t going anywhere.”

San laughs, eyelids heavy as he slips his hands down to Wooyoung’s ass and grips it, rutting their bodies together. He’s nearly fully hard. Wooyoung loves it.

“Are you aroused by my declaration of eternal love?” Wooyoung giggles, finding purchase with palms against the bed on either side of San’s body. He rolls his hips down, seeking friction, the comfort of something hot and known. 

“You could read me a book of insect-related potion-making, and I’d still be aroused by you like this. You really don’t know how hot you are?”

“No, I do,” Wooyoung teases, thumbing at San’s lower lip until he opens to suck at Wooyoung’s skin. “I know I’m not supposed to use sex to make myself feel better, but I’m really looking for some sex to make myself feel better right about now.”

San laughs and rolls Wooyoung onto his back, body heavy and firm as it hovers over him. Wooyoung hooks his ankles behind San’s thighs and yanks him down closer. He wants to feel the full weight of him, skin against skin. All of it. 

“Everything smells like bergamot in here,” San says, nipping and kissing his way down Wooyoung’s throat. Wooyoung scratches lightly between San’s shoulder blades. Sometimes he’ll scratch hard, hard enough to break skin in lifted pink-red jagged rivers down San’s spine. Sometimes he’ll heal them after, watching everything sink back into place on San’s tan skin. Sometimes San asks to leave them there.

“I’m not even sure why—I don’t think we even lit bergamot incense?” Wooyoung replies in a gasp, head falling back heavy against the pillows. 

San sits up a bit, and Wooyoung whines. But San just kisses and mouths his way down Wooyoung’s chest, belly, and thighs. He sniffs loudly at Wooyoung’s belly button. “Even you smell like bergamot.”

Wooyoung shoves at San’s head, squealing in indignation. “Stop smelling me, you pervert! Please touch my cock, or I’ll  _ die _ .”

“You whiny brat,” San sighs adoringly. “I don’t think I can fuck you without you making a huge ruckus, but I’ll take care of you.” Wooyoung pouts, so San shoves his fingers into Wooyoung’s mouth. “Don’t give me that look, Woo. We both know you are a next-level screamer. You are an accidentally burst all glass in a 2 acre radius kind of screamer. And I’m not sure if it’s even your magick or just the pitch.”

Wooyoung yanks at San’s hair and yells around the fingers in his mouth. He means to say  _ put my dick in your mouth now please _ but instead what comes out is a long, horny, muffled whine.

“Sweet baby,” San coos, knowing which buttons to press. “I’ve got you.”

And he does. His mouth is so different from his skin. Hot and wet and soft. And he knows how to work Wooyoung’s cock. He knows it better than his own cock, probably. When they first started dating—or what soon became dating but started as clumsily hooking up—San went down on Wooyoung every time they hooked up, and refused to let Wooyoung reciprocate any orgasms.

He’d eventually tell Wooyoung it was because he was afraid of getting too attached. If he could focus only on giving Wooyoung the best orgasms ever, he wouldn’t need to think about how he could never really have Wooyoung the way he wanted.

Which was absurd, considering Wooyoung was already halfway to love by the time San first struggled to shimmy Wooyoung’s skinny jeans down with a huff of annoyance and said ‘your thighs are a masterpiece in these, but please next time wear sweatpants or something.’

Wooyoung’s fingers are tangled in San’s hair, tugging at the strands. San’s fingers circle the soft sensitive skin over Wooyoung’s entrance, just barely pressing, and Wooyoung is shamefully close already. 

You’d think that being with someone so long that they can get you off in three minutes flat would be boring after a while, but Wooyoung has no qualms about it. Some days he wants to fuck for hours and others he just wants to desperately get off against the comfort of San’s body. 

“Hey, beautiful, look at me,” San says, and Wooyoung tips his chin to his chest to meet San’s gaze between his legs. He’s so hot, dark hair fallen over his eyes and matted with sweat to the sides of his face. 

Wooyoung notices San’s hand moving beneath himself, and he loves this boy who gets off on his pleasure. He loves him so much. It’s like this trembling aching thing inside him always. This need to keep San safe and treasure him and thank him for loving in a way that Wooyoung didn’t think he’d ever know. 

It’s in his belly, molten and bubbling up, up into his chest, coating his ribs and pressing against his heart, and Wooyoung might actually scream. Wooyoung feels like he might really burst open from the heat. His orgasm hits, and he feels San coming soon after, wet and slick against Wooyoung’s thigh.

Wooyoung can feel the light in his throat now. It’s burning at his esophagus and knocking against his uvula and Wooyoung has to open his mouth and let it out because it’s too big now and it  _ burns _ . 

San is reaching for him, but then San is screaming too, and Wooyoung clutches at him desperately. 

The light bursts from between their open mouths, catching on their mixed breath, and it grows brighter and brighter, blinding and filling the room. Wooyoung shuts his eyes against it. 

Everything settles after a moment, and when Wooyoung opens his eyes again, San is there and safe.

And on the floor beside the bed, is a naked boy, skin radiating golden light.

“Took you long enough,” the boy says.

Wooyoung passes out again. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: sorry this took me so long to get out. This chapter is darker than the last one, and I struggled trying to find San's voice a little. But I'm happy with how it turned out now!
> 
> Forgive me another cliffhanger, but I promise there is a happy ending in sight!!! Warning that there is very brief mention of past character death in this chapter!!!!

“Okay, so, the logical thing to do here--”

San sighs and drops his head into his palms. He releases a sound somewhere between a yawn and a deep, hollow moan. “There’s no logical thing to do here! I have  _ never _ heard of  _ anyone _ in the history of  _ ever _ conjuring a familiar in the form of a human.”

“Well, let’s be clear here, San. He’s not human,” Hongjoong says. San had shooed everyone else out of the room, but he knew they were still listening from behind the door. 

“Well, he’s not a  _ witch _ . He just... _ appeared _ . Out of nowhere. Out of nothing!” San shouts, throwing his arms up toward the ceiling. 

Wooyoung is still passed out on their bed. He doesn’t stir, despite the shouting. Wooyoung could sleep clean through the apocalypse, probably. There was a time one of their potions boiled over onto the floor in the kitchen, and the house had predictably gone into panic mode as the scalding liquid boiled across her floorboards, so she’d switched on all the faucets, flickered all the lights, slammed all the windows and doors. 

Wooyoung slept right on through the night.

“He didn’t appear out of nowhere or nothing. He was conjured from Wooyoung’s magic.”

Despite having spoken immediately after appearing, the human-esque familiar hasn’t spoken since. In fact, he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the bed (now wearing one of San’s plain white shirts and old gray sweatpants because San couldn’t stand the sight of the boy glowing in the nude in their bedroom), just staring at Wooyoung’s face. 

“It doesn’t make sense, though, Joong,” San murmurs, suddenly so poignantly aware of the boy’s eerie presence. He’s also aware of the faint tingle running down his spine, raising the hairs on his arms. His blood feels wrong. Like it’s trying to reach through his skin and get over to Wooyoung and the boy. “The ritual didn’t work. We all saw it fail.”

Hongjoong shrugs. “You know as well as I do that magick isn’t so black and white. Magick is a whole bigass rainbow.” Aurora flutters in front of Hongjoong, sprinkling rainbow light in her wake to illustrate his point.

The conjured boy reaches for Wooyoung’s hand, where his arm had fallen free from the blankets off the side of the mattress. San makes to intercede, but Hongjoong stops him with a hand tugging at the hem of his shirt. 

All the boy does is trace his fingers over Wooyoung’s knuckles gently. He doesn’t look away from Wooyoung’s sleeping face. San is about to speak up when the boy does it first.

“I’m not human,” he says. “So you can stop panicking about having plucked a human spirit from the Heavens.”

“That’s not--”

“I’m Agathion,” he says. His voice is low and warm. A little soft and quiet, like he’s shy now, despite how confident he seemed when he appeared.

“Impossible,” Hongjoong declares. “You should only be able to appear at mid-day.”

“Or when I’m needed,” he replies. Then he’s moving and is suddenly in front of San, palm pressed to his chest, where his shirt gapes open at the front. “I am yours too.”

San steps back, and the boy’s hand drops. He looks briefly disappointed, brow furrowing. 

“I didn’t call for you,” San says, clearing his throat nervously, trying to think of a moment--a split second even--where he might’ve subconsciously reached his magick out. 

“I’m not a cat or a frog, San,” he says, brow furrowing more, making him look like a sad cherub, and San feels the way his own name rings loud in the marrow of his bones when the boy speaks it. It sounds … right? Yeah. It sounds  _ right _ as he forms the sound in his deep gentle voice. “I don’t come when called like that. There’s no dog whistle.” He pauses and looks right into San’s eyes. “It’s more like ... when I’m needed.”

“Yeosang,” Wooyoung murmurs, seemingly still asleep but reaching out desperately toward them. “Yeosang.”

The boy is there again in an instant, taking Wooyoung’s hand. His and Wooyoung’s small delicate fingers entertwine. 

“That’s your name?” 

“I don’t think I’ve ever spoken it before,” he says, gently pressing back the sweat-matted hair of Wooyoung’s fringe from his eyes. “But, yes, it is.”

“You’ve had other Masters before?”

Yeosang shrugs. “I don’t remember them clearly, but I’m sure I must have.”

“Why come to us then? There’s no one else who needs you?”

“Because I’m yours,” Yeosang says simply. “I’ve just been waiting for you to find me.”

San doesn’t want to leave Yeosang alone with Wooyoung, so Seonghwa agrees to sit and supervise. Yeosang scoffs when Seonghwa sits against the door, watching him and Wooyoung cautiously. 

“Your familiar is truly perfect for you,” Yeosang gripes, glaring at the hawk perched on the desk lamp. AngBi chomps its beak in his direction, and Yeosang mimics him with small rounded white teeth. San sighs and pats Seonghwa on the cheek as they leave the room. 

In the kitchen, San paces back and forth while the others prepare breakfast. It’s 4am. San’s stomach turns at the scent of frying eggs in oil. 

“I don’t think he means any harm,” Yunho says, pulling thick slabs of bacon from the fridge. Grease drips from the ends onto the floor, where it’s absorbed into the wood. The house hums, pleased. “If he is Woo’s familiar, he’d be incapable of hurting him regardless.”

“He said he was  _ ours _ ,” San says, dropping down into a chair and slumping over at the kitchen table, forehead to the rough wood. He just wants to sleep. He just wants to get his blood to stop pounding through his veins like it’s seeking a new home.

“Even better then,” Jongho adds, pouring more oil into the skillet. It hisses and jumps from the pan, but he doesn’t flinch. “He can’t harm either of you.”

“I’m not concerned about him harming us,” San mumbles. A hand comes down on his back. It rubs gently between his shoulder blades. It feels like Mingi.

“What are you concerned about then?” It is Mingi. Big warm hands. Voice that rumbles like distant thunder over the ocean. He was one of the first to open up to San after he arrived at the Coven.  _ Magick is pretty great, huh _ ? He’d said, laughing as he sent Hongjoong’s workbook sailing into the deep waters of the nearby lake. 

“Why now?” is what leaves San’s mouth, but he’s sure it’s more than that. It’s more than what he’s willing to explain or voice or reason through. It’s more than any of them will understand, and it’s more than even Wooyoung could understand, and there’s nothing that aches worse than that. There’s nothing that sears deep into San’s ribcage quite like words he can’t say to Wooyoung.

“He said he was waiting for you,” Hongjoong says, grabbing ceramic plates from the cabinets. They’re all mismatched because Wooyoung insisted on making them himself, and he’s no ceramicist. They’re lumpy and cracked and chipped, and there’s no consistent coloration but they’re perfect. 

“That’s what worries me. I don’t remember calling him at all.”

“You think he knows something you don’t know?” Mingi asks as he continues to massage his gigantic warm hands over San’s back, kneading his sore spots like he wants to push everything troubling San, physical and metaphysical, back into place with his own body. “Like, maybe you’re in trouble?”

San takes in a shaky exhale. “Spirits like Agathion don’t just appear for shits and giggles. If he’s here now, it must mean something.”

Yunho places a mug of tea down beside San’s cheek on the tabletop. “Then it’s good he’s here, right?” San sits up, and suddenly Pancake is in his lap, pawing at his chest and snuffling his wet nose into San’s neck. 

San brings his hands to Pancake’s ears, scratching at the fuzz behind them. There’s a comforting wave of energy flowing from Pancake’s little white paws, and San doesn’t often feel like crying, but he does now. Because his friends, his Coven, are too good, far too good for him. 

Keeping a secret from them like this. 

San’s feels the words again, pressing at the underside of his tongue. He can feel them like sweet sticky honey on his hard palate that he can’t seem to swallow down. And he’s about to say something. He is.

When Wooyoung shrieks from the bedroom.

And San’s mind goes blank, everything he’d meant to voice immediately wiping clean except for the need to be with Wooyoung, to make sure he’s safe. 

He barges into the bedroom to find Seonghwa pressing Yeosang to the wall with an elbow at his throat and Wooyoung behind them, yanking at Seonghwa’s sweater and screaming. 

“Let him go, Hwa! He wasn’t hurting me!” Wooyoung cries.

Yeosang is unmoving, staring straight at Wooyoung over Seonghwa’s shoulder, despite having Seonghwa inches from his face, breathing heavily and grumbling what sounds like the beginning of a shielding spell.

“What happened?” San asks, walking over to cup Wooyoung’s face, feel his warm, sleep-flushed cheeks beneath his palms. Wooyoung leans into the touch. “I thought...you were screaming! You’re not hurt?”

“I was trying to lay down with him,” Yeosang explains. Now his eyes are on San, and he doesn’t blink once. It’s unsettling. The beauty of his sharp features and bright white-golden hair. 

“Wha--you can’t just?--”

“Why can’t I? I’m his familiar,” Yeosang counters. “Even the bird gets to touch his Master.” 

“Don’t call him  _ the bird _ \--” Seonghwa hisses, and there are waves of something powerful and defensive wafting from his body.

“Then please let go of me, since I’ve done nothing worse than what you allow from your other familiar creatures.”

“It’s different,” Seonghwa defends, stepping back, arms falling resigned to his sides. The energy hovering around him settles. “Isn’t it?” He turns to San, and he looks just as lost as San feels. 

Because San doesn’t know.

Is it different because he’s a beautiful human-esque creature? 

“Are you okay, Yeosang?” Wooyoung says, quiet and unsure from behind San, who’d stepped in front of him defensively.

Yeosang rubs at his throat and the red angry mark Seonghwa had left instantly vanishes. “I’ve suffered worse.”

Hongjoong takes Seonghwa by the hand and drags him bodily from the room. “You need to learn to ask for help and not just instantly take potentially catastrophic action, okay, my love?”

Seonghwa grumbles and follows him out of the room, leaving Wooyoung, Yeosang, and San. It feels wrong, having Yeosang in their most intimate, private room in the house. 

Something inside San desperately wants him gone.

Yeosang must sense it because he says, “I know you want to despise me, but it was both of your energies that called me to you.”

“How do we know it isn’t a trap?” 

Yeosang tugs aside the collar of the loose white shirt San had given him to bare his collarbone, where there’s a Familiar branding mark of two triangles placed vertically tip-to-tip like an hourglass. “If it’s a mistake, you won’t have one to match, right?”

Wooyoung’s breath hitches in his throat, and he lifts the hem of his shirt to show the same marking on his left hipbone. “I’d always wondered...it’s such a specific birthmark to have.” 

“But I don’t,” San starts, brows knitting in confusion, “I don’t have one of those.”

Yeosang steps closer, and San immediately holds his hands up protectively, instinctively. 

“Wooyoung,” Yeosang says, and something inside San growls at the easy way Yeosang forms Wooyoung’s name like that. Like it’s  _ his _ . “Would you mind?”

Wooyoung approaches San nervously, and that makes San feel even worse, like Wooyoung is frightened, like Wooyoung is frightened  _ of him _ , which shouldn’t be possible. San has dedicated his life since early adolescence to ensuring Wooyoung never feels fear, especially if San can help it. 

He has cupped an endless amount of spiders in his palms, pretending to feel nothing, pretending not to feel the tingles of terror at the sensation of tiny legs against his skin... he has taken all those spiders and deposited them outside in their garden because Wooyoung--despite his adamant horror at their presence in the house--wouldn’t allow San to squish any living creature within its walls. 

San has swallowed down every ounce of fear that threatened to overtake him every time he felt consumed with a fire that doesn’t belong to him. He’s made his fear into a tight ball of malleable clay in his chest, kept imprisoned by his ribcage. 

“It’s okay, baby,” San says, forcing himself to open for Wooyoung. To let him feel that San is willing and in-control. 

“Can I?” Wooyoung asks, fingertips finding San’s waist beneath his shirt. His skin is still sleep-warmed, and San wants to press against him and breathe in the scent of aromatherapy oils that cling to him from the ceremony. He wants to coil around Wooyoung like branches of ivy, weaving himself between limbs, always adapting to stay as close to Wooyoung’s skin as possible. 

San lets Wooyoung lift away his shirt and guide him in a slow circle in front of him. San is aware of Yeosang’s gaze on him, and it burns. 

Wooyoung runs his fingertips up the length of the back of San’s throat, lifting the hair at the base of his neck that has grown far too long recently. San can feel Wooyoung forming two perfect triangles there at the back of his neck, breath quickening, and he knows.

“It’s here,” Wooyoung says gently, willing San to turn back to face him. “It’s real.”

San doesn’t want Yeosang here. He doesn’t want the warm golden glow of his skin radiating in the comforting darkness of their bedroom. He doesn’t want this forced connection to a creature that warns of danger. San wants to cup Yeosang in his palms like all of those discarded spiders in their garden, and he wants to push all of this down deeper into his chest like it never happened. 

“We don’t need you,” San mutters, glaring at Yeosang over Wooyoung’s shoulder. “And I never asked for a familiar. I don’t want one.”

“Wait,” Wooyoung hisses, wheeling around. “I dreamt of you. But I was in your place.”

Yeosang tips his head to the side, eyes slanting in confusion. “In my place?”

“I was in darkness, covered in chains,” Wooyoung explains.

San grabs his arm, squeezing, but Wooyoung doesn’t react. He moves closer to Yeosang. San can’t stop him, his feet reluctant to move any nearer to the glowing boy who looks at  _ his _ Wooyoung like that. Like he’s been waiting for him for centuries. And maybe he has. 

“Ah,” Yeosang murmurs, gaze dropping to the floor. “That is where I’m kept when I’m in limbo between realms, waiting. I’m surprised you could--I’m surprised your dream took you there.”

“My dreams often show me things I’m meant to find. Like Sannie,” Wooyoung explains. “How long...were you there?” Wooyoung murmurs, sounding devastated, and San hates this. Hates that he played a part in bringing this pain to Wooyoung.

And possibly to Yeosang. 

If he can feel pain.

Which, of course he can. When Pancake stepped on a jagged stone at the riverbed by Yunho’s old house, he still squealed in pain before it healed. Familiars are still residents of this realm while they’re conjured here--their flesh is flesh, blood is blood.

Yeosang, maybe sensing how desperately San wishes to erase this conversation, simply replies, “Doesn’t matter. I’m here now.”

Wooyoung sighs, and he throws his arms around Yeosang’s neck. “Silly Yeosangie,” Wooyoung cries, pressing his face into the hollow of Yeosang’s glowing throat. “Of course it matters. It all matters. You matter.”

And the look in Yeosang’s eyes.

San knows that look.

He can remember looking out at Wooyoung like that too, when he realized Wooyoung would become his whole life. 

Yeosang doesn’t hug back, but he doesn’t push Wooyoung away like San wishes he would. And it isn’t like San to be possessive. It isn’t, truly. When Wooyoung wanted to follow Hongjoong into the forest near the old Coven grounds for Summer Solstice, San knew he was asking to breathe in nature’s magickal energy at its purest, his body and magickal essence laid out bare on the forest floor, surrounded by and held by bodies that weren’t San’s. It isn’t like Witches of the same Coven aren’t known to all fuck on occasion, especially when harnessing carnal energy. What could be more powerful than 7 forces acting together all at once?

But this is different.

Wooyoung and San have always been different, able to separate sex from love. Sure, they love their friends, but it’s different. It has  _ always _ been Wooyoung and San.

San can see Yeosang clenching his hands into fists at his sides, like he’s trying to keep himself from wrapping his arms back around Wooyoung. 

That tightly molded ball at the center of San’s chest starts heaving against the bones of his ribs. It hurts, trying to force it back down, make it small. Trying to…

San doubles over and drops to his knees, biting back a yelp of pain as the fire slashes at him from the inside, seeking escape. 

Wooyoung is yelling his name, and San watches Yeosang pull him away. Everything burns hotter, flames licking up into San’s skull and breathing out through his eye sockets, and San knows what’s happening but can’t stop it now.

And Yeosang must know too, because he throws Wooyoung out into the hall and locks the door behind him. 

Wooyoung is screeching and pounding on the door. 

San wishes it were like one of those times when he locked Wooyoung out as a prank, when Wooyoung howled like a banshee and knocked his little fists against the wood. When he was fully naked and dripping after a bath, water slipping through the crack beneath the door. When San would open the door and grab Wooyoung by the thickness of his thighs and press him back up against the door and feel the warm slickness of his wet skin under his hands. When Wooyoung would grip the edge of the doorframe and rock his hips down, eager and loving and unafraid.

But here and now, Yeosang is kneeling in front of San, eyes bright as sunlight cast through solid amber, and San feels the urge to scream at him like he never has at anyone before. To cast him away. Banish him back into those chains in the endless infinite darkness. He has never felt anything so hateful before. 

“I’m sorry I came too late,” Yeosang pleads. “I was trapped there, watching.”

“Watching  _ what _ ?” San hisses through gritted teeth, his knuckles cracking as he punches his fists to the floorboards to keep from smashing them into Yeosang’s perfect cherubic face. Goddess, San despises him.

And San never despises anyone.

It hurts. It hurts to feel so much hatred. How can a body contain so much hatred? It can’t be natural. That’s why it burns so badly. He’s being warned not to trust this creature. San has survived years without love, and he won’t allow anyone or anything to take him back to that time.

Why can’t San just trap Yeosang in a paper cup and leave him in the rose bushes? 

Because he’s not a  _ pest _ , San forces himself to think briefly, before images of Yeosang trapped in a spider’s web overwhelm him and make him whimper. He wants to hurt. 

Eden’s voice echoes in his skull:  _ Do no harm. _

Yeosang tips San’s chin up with two delicate fingers, and San is frozen at the touch. “I’m going to fix this, San. I promise. Please trust me.”

San’s eyes screw up as his insides burn, and he feels as if he might open his mouth and vomit up the ashes of his internal organs that are surely smoldering now, but then Yeosang is leaning in and touching his lips to San’s. They’re warm, thinner than Wooyoung’s, but softer than anything San has ever felt. 

San’s body floods with calm, with something that tastes like love but isn’t Love. Like comfort maybe, or trust. 

San goes pliant and limp against Yeosang, who cradles him close and whispers, “I’m so sorry, San. I should’ve been there, and I’m so sorry.”

“I didn’t ask for you. I didn’t want you,” San whines, even as he presses his face to Yeosang’s shoulder and sobs brokenly.

“I wanted you,” Yeosang says back so gently, oh so gently, and San feels like he’s being held captive against the warm, wrinkled contours of the Goddess’s hands. It’s...comforting.

The others leave in the morning. Their magickal domains can’t be without their magick too long before things start getting kind of... _ off _ . 

Hongjoong presses his forehead to San’s and then Wooyoung’s, murmuring, “I’m sorry I’m not Eden, but I promise I’ll do my best to provide guidance. My soul is with you. Summon us any time you need us, please.”

San aches as he nods, unable to form words. He’s felt stilted since he fell asleep cradled against Yeosang on the floor of his bedroom. He’d woken up with Wooyoung and not Yeosang, but he can remember the sensation of  _ finality _ when Yeosang held him. He hates it. 

Wooyoung sniffles and jump-hugs Seonghwa, clutching at him. “I hate when you have to go.”

Seonghwa gently plants Wooyoung back on his feet, and Wooyoung huffs, turning to Jongho.

Jongho rolls his eyes but reluctantly holds his arms out and open. Wooyoung jumps. Jongho easily sweeps him up bridal style, Wooyoung giggling easily, peppering his round cheek with kisses.

As if he doesn’t mind the presence of Yeosang, behind all of them, seated politely at the kitchen table where Wooyoung had instructed him to sit.

And maybe he doesn’t.

San really just... _ hates _ it.

They say their goodbyes. Wooyoung winds his arms around San’s middle from behind, where San stares out the open door, watching the others fly off and disappear. He has spent so long willing away the memories of times before the Coven. It will always pain him to see them go. 

“We need to talk, Sannie,” Wooyoung says, gentle and sweet. 

“Yeah,” San replies, feeling everything inside him starting to hollow out. 

Yeosang is there at the table that Wooyoung and San built together, and while he doesn’t look  _ comfortable _ , he also doesn’t look like he feels out of place. 

“We’re talking with  _ him _ here?” San hisses, as Wooyoung pulls out a mismatched dining chair and plops down beside Yeosang. Yeosang gives a small, kittenish smile at Wooyoung. Wooyoung smiles back.

San clutches the hem of his sweater, stretching the fibers, and his hands are shaking. 

“Sannie,” Wooyoung calls, sweetness bleeding into desperation, “please. Come sit.”

San is frozen, staring at Yeosang there at his table, where he’s sat beside San’s most precious thing, smiling at him like he loves him.

“I don’t want him here, Woo,” San croaks, throat burning with bile like he might be sick. Something is wrong. He’s been so in control. He’s been fine. Not perfect, no, but fine. All these years, he’s been fine. 

But ever since Yeosang appeared…

San feels like his skin is too tight. His body can’t contain that  _ thing _ inside him, and everything tastes like ash. 

“Baby,” Wooyoung calls again, arm outstretched toward him. “ _ Please. _ Come here.”

San draws in a deep breath, willing everything back down into place with each inhale. Breathe in. Push it all down. Breathe in. The air in his larynx acting like a heavy weight, pressing and pressing until San can find the strength to move closer. 

He sits.

Wooyoung is beaming, like this is no small feat. Like he understands how silently San struggles and knows. And he does. He always, always, always gives him time. 

Gives him the space to get himself together, assembling his pieces back into place after letting them get all twisted up inside. 

San takes in one last deep, healing breath. 

“Where do we start?”

Wooyoung takes San’s hand and twines their fingers together. “How much do you know about us, Yeosang?”

Yeosang tips his head in thought. “Hm. Most everything, I think.”

“You think?”

“There are things within you that aren’t observable,” Yeosang explains. “Things you hide well.”

“Ah,” Wooyoung and San drawl in unison. 

“But...everything else?” Wooyoung chokes, face instantly flooding with color. “You just saw it all from where you were being held?” Wooyoung asks.

“I did,” Yeosang answers, looking embarrassed, averting his eyes to the surface of the table. 

Wooyoung flushes deeper, fanning his face. “I didn’t realize we were being watched.”

“Everything around you is always watching,” Yeosang replies, now grinning a little. “Your home has seen things she surely wishes she could forget.”

Wooyoung stomps his foot against a creaky floorboard. “Stop watching us, pervert!”

The floorboard jiggles and then flips up to smack Wooyoung in the shin. He cries out and whines, pulling his feet up onto the chair and wrapping his arms around his knees protectively. 

“After all we’ve done for you, you ungrateful--”

“Woo,” San sighs. “Be nice.”

“So why are you here now?” Wooyoung asks, turning to face Yeosang completely.

“Because you called me.”

“We’ve called you before, and you never came!” Wooyoung whimpers, clutching at Yeosang’s arm and shaking it this way and that way until Yeosang is giving him a full, bright smile. 

San glances away, breathing deep again. 

“Only you called me before. This time it was both of you.”

San jolts in his seat, tasting something bitter. “I didn’t-- I didn’t call anyone! Only Wooyoung was in the ceremonial circle.”

“I’m not a normal familiar, obviously,” Yeosang explains. “If I were a...frog or cat, the ceremonial circle would call me. I’m called by something much more primitive, let’s say. I’m called by yearning.”

“Yearning?”

“Something like it. Its magickal equivalent. It’s hard to put into words. I was held in a strange and cold limbo space between here and somewhere not here, and I was waiting for a purpose. I was waiting for the two of you to realize you needed me. I was...I watched you. Separately, at first, and I’ve never known of such a thing happening. I knew I was meant to be there with you, and I wasn’t, and there was nothing I could do but watch.”

Wooyoung’s eyes brim with tears. “Yeosangie,” he sniffles, pressing his nose to Yeosang’s shoulder. “We’re so sorry. Aren’t we, baby?”

San’s hands shake beneath the table. He wants to wrap his arms around Yeosang, too. He wants to…

Wrap his  _ hands _ .

Wrap his hands around his...

San stands. “I need to go into town,” he huffs, stumbling clumsily away from the table to go grab his coat.

“Wait!” Wooyoung cries, following after him. “We’ll all go together! We need to introduce Yeosang to everyone.”

San doesn’t reply, so Wooyoung takes it as a yes, ushering Yeosang to the door and helping him into one of San’s old coats, despite Yeosang declaring it unnecessary. 

San leads the way into town, following the stone path from their house through the trees at the perimeter of their land, until the stones turn to pavement and cement. Yeosang looks curiously at the cars zooming past them on the quiet street. 

“Never been in a car?” Wooyoung asks.

Yeosang laughs, a soft cloud of sound. “I don’t think they had been invented the last time I was on this plane. I’ve seen them through your eyes before, which almost feels real to me. Felt, I mean.”

“You don’t have that ability now?” San replies, wondering how much Yeosang has already seen inside him. How much he might disclose to Wooyoung, if he hasn’t already. 

Yeosang shrugs, looking sideways through slanted eyes in San’s direction. “It’s much more difficult when I’m physically present. Unless you let me in.”

San scoffs under his breath and walks faster, putting himself a couple paces ahead. Lady Jung’s shop isn’t far, so it isn’t unreasonable for San to speed up to reach it. Right? He isn’t simply putting distance between them.

He’s almost positive Yeosang can still see through him.

Wooyoung murmurs sweetly to Yeosang, “We’re preparing the garden for winter, so we need to repot some of our plants and herbs inside and buy some new ones that will be okay in the cold.”

Yeosang doesn’t reply aloud, but he must nod or make some other kind of gesture, because Wooyoung giggles behind his palm, a short burst of pure joy in the open air. 

Mrs. Jung’s front door is ajar, as it often is when the weather is nice, allowing the plants to breathe the clean outside autumn air. 

There’s a small rubber tree potted by the door that looks miserable. Its branches are hanging heavy with withering leaves. 

Mrs. Jung comes out from the back upon hearing their footsteps, and she cries out, “Oh thank the Goddess! I don’t know  _ what _ is happening, but I can’t get that fellow there to cheer up. I’ve given him a heat lamp and grow-lights and measured his water just right, and nothing will lift his spirits.”

San squats down in front of the little rubber tree. He waves.

The thing about plants is that they don’t trust easily. San wouldn’t trust a creature that could easily destroy him or merely let him rot either. 

Moments later, a single shiny green leaf flutters in response. 

San loves plants, though, for this very reason. No language necessary. They can sense his intentions, and San doesn’t need to explain himself. He can just let himself feel the air around the rubber tree and focus on the way the hairs on the backs of his hands stand on end with life-giving energy. The branches of the small tree quiver beneath the magick San focuses above them, letting it rain down gently down from his fingertips. 

“Just like humans, plants can have inexplicable fits of sadness. Well, maybe not exactly like humans...but,” San starts.

“They aren’t as simple as we think they are,” Yeosang finishes for him.

San glances back at him, and Yeosang is watching him with a carefully guarded expression. “Nothing is truly simple.”

Wooyoung picks up a white jasmine plant and brings it up to the counter. “We’re stockpiling for winter and trying to ready the garden before it’s too late. The frost came too early last year, and we lost a lot.”

“Smart boys,” Mrs. Jung says, patting Wooyoung on the top of the head. This is why Wooyoung will never find another plant shop. Mrs. Jung understands his greediness for praise. “By the way, who is this?”

“Oh, that’s Yeosang! He’s...new,” Wooyoung explains vaguely.

Mrs. Jung practices Wicca magick, so she understands when the boys come by for herbs and oils for a certain ceremony, but she’s not a real Witch. There are things Wooyoung and San can’t explain to her, even if they tried. Things they understand from being able to sense the existence of other realms and planes and spirits around them. 

“Say hi, Yeosangie,” Wooyoung urges. 

Yeosang gives a small bow. “Hi, I’m Yeosang. I’m new?”

Mrs. Jung laughs, expression bright and excited. “You’re a sweet thing, aren’t you?” She assesses him a moment. “You have a very pure aura.”

Yeosang blinks slowly. “What is it like? No one has ever told me about my aura before.”

Mrs. Jung claps her hands together and squeals, “Lemme get my deck!” before running into the back room.

Yeosang turns in bewilderment to Wooyoung and San. “What is a deck?”

“Tarot,” Wooyoung and San answer at once.

Mrs. Jung returns, shuffling her deck as she moves. The cards are old, have been in her family for generations: the corners wrinkled, the colors faded where fingertips have flipped through them over the years. “I won’t subject you to a full reading, but if you would be so kind as to humor me and select one card from the deck with your left hand, please.”

Yeosang glances back again, and Wooyoung nudges him up to the counter. “It’s okay, just take one. It won’t hurt you.”

Yeosang looks unsure, but he reaches out toward the fanned deck of cards in Mrs. Jung’s hand and pinches a single card from the center. He holds it up. “What is it?”

Mrs. Jung is positively giddy, snatching the card from Yeosang’s hand and crowing, “My favorite card! Wooyoungie, you’ve found yourself a lovely new friend.”

“Why?” Yeosang asks. “It says something about me?”

“It’s the Star, dear,” she explains. “The card of Hope. The card of Miracles, if you believe in those, of course.” She looks Yeosang over again, like maybe she can see the way he normally glows beneath his golden skin, even though he looks human to humans. “Ah, I knew you were pure, but this just solidifies it, sweet boy. Keep him around, boys, I mean it.”

Yeosang’s cheeks are a soft peachy pink as he ducks his head, shy. Wooyoung is beaming, proud. 

And it isn’t the same pride they see from Hongjoong when Aurora alights on a budded flower and they watch it burst into bloom beneath her. It’s different.

It’s the kind of pride that San feels when Wooyoung walks out barefoot into their yard in the rain and shuts his eyes against the torrent of droplets and begins to dance. It’s the kind of pride San feels, watching from the sliding door to the yard, as the droplets glance off his body, repelled by his magick as he twirls. As Wooyoung carefully maneuvers the deluge away from the rapidly filling reservoir wetlands behind the house and sends it into their reserve tank to protect the wildlife from the flooding.

The pride of Wooyoung turning back to face San in the doorway afterward, soaked to the skin from letting down his shields. He’d slowly open his eyes, knowing he’d find San standing there. If San could bottle pure, unaltered joy, it would be the way Wooyoung smiled after, lips stretched wide and dark hair plastered to his cheeks. 

Here in Mrs. Jung’s store, San’s gut acids churn, and when he looks at Yeosang, Yeosang is looking back at him. 

“What is your aura?” Yeosang asks. 

Mrs. Jung laughs. “Sannie never lets me read for him. Such a secretive boy.”

“I’m not secretive,” San protests. 

“He opens up when he’s ready,” Wooyoung explains, grabbing San by the sleeve of his sweater and tugging him closer. “He’s really very talkative once you get him going. And very sassy.”

“‘M not sassy,” San scoffs, flushing. “I just tell it like it is.”

“Do you?” Yeosang counters, and it’s quiet, quiet enough that San might’ve missed it if he weren’t listening closely, but he didn’t. 

He wants to engage but tries to remember where they are. Tries to remember to give things a chance. For Wooyoung at least. 

“This one could give you a run for your money, San dear,” Mrs. Jung says, looking curiously between San and Yeosang like she can read the odd tension there. “Purity doesn’t mean silence, you know. Purity can be the search for truth, too. Cleansing out the cobwebs.”

“Spiders are good for the Earth’s ecosystem,” Yeosang says, confused by the analogy.

“It’s a metaphor, Yeosangie,” Wooyoung laughs, patting Yeosang on the cheek. “San and I would never harm a living creature.”

Yeosang looks at San again. San is waiting, breath hitching in his chest, for Yeosang to expose him, but he just nods and looks away again. 

Wooyoung gathers the rest of their supplies, forcing stacks of pots and plastic planters of herbs into Yeosang and San’s open arms. Wooyoung picks up the little rubber tree last. 

“I paid for him secretly earlier,” he whispers to San behind his hand. “He drooped back down when we started to leave. I think he likes you.”

San’s heart swells, and he brushes his fingers over a glossy green leaf, and it strokes his fingertip in return. 

“Thank you,” San breathes out. “I love you so much, Woo.”

Wooyoung smiles, warm and bright and trusting. “I love you too.”

“I’m sorry about being so weird before. And last night and--”

“Hey,” Wooyoung brushes San’s fringe away from his eyes and thumbs gently over San’s cheekbone, “it’s okay. You don’t have to be afraid. Yeosang and I talked last night, after he let me back in.”

San freezes, and it feels like his blood freezes with him, locking him in place. “You did?”

“You don’t need to be afraid of him. He was summoned by our love, babe. Nothing sinister could come from love.”

San isn’t so sure, but he nods. “Right. Of course. That...makes sense.”

Wooyoung has always been able to read San, but if he reads the skepticism, he ignores it. He rubs his fingers into the knot of tension at the back of San’s neck. “He pulled the Star card.”

“I know you love Mrs. Jung because she’s sweet to you, but she doesn’t have real magick. It’s all coincidence.”

“You know as well as I do that coincidence is just a coward’s way of looking at fate,” Wooyoung counters. 

Fate, huh.

San looks at the series of events that led them here. He thinks of how he felt when he found Wooyoung, like he couldn’t believe how lucky he was to exist at the same time and place in the entire scope of the universe as someone who could truly love him back. 

He thinks of the day when Eden sat them all down and explained how Hongjoong, as the next Supreme of their Coven would be taking over. Eden was already weak then. In the development of Hongjoong’s full powers, Eden’s magick had slowly been depleting, taking his health with it. That was always how it worked if you led a Coven. Hongjoong resented it, of course, knowing he was draining the man who had essentially been the only parental figure in their lives. Eden loved them, and he comforted Hongjoong by reminding him that Fate is never wrong. 

Fate brought San to Wooyoung.

But Fate also took Eden from them.

Fate swings in an endless pendulum, neither good nor bad. It simply is. Stringing them all along on some foretold journey that it would be silly to resent. 

Did Fate send San out beneath a falling star one balmy summer night, hands held perfectly in place to catch it? San had felt so lucky in that moment, that Fate had placed that star directly in his waiting hands.

It must be Fate. There is nothing else. 

When they get home, Wooyoung takes Yeosang out to the garden to start moving the more cold-resistant plants to pots that will be placed on the windowsill inside. 

“The rosemary right there, Yeosangie,” Wooyoung instructs. 

Through the open window from the kitchen to the yard, San listens as Yeosang asks, “Like this?”

And Wooyoung, oh so gently, talks him through exposing the roots from the old dirt and trimming off the dead leaves. 

“It doesn’t hurt?” Yeosang asks nervously.

“No, it helps it grow. The dead leaves divert nutrients away from the thriving leaves that could be getting them. The dead leaves also encourage pests that could come destroy it.”

Yeosang doesn’t say anything, but San hears the soft sound of the garden shears and Wooyoung’s encouraging coos.

San takes some of the herbs that won’t survive the winter and ties them by the stems onto the twine hung in the kitchen beside the deep sink basin. The lavender and tarragon and mint fill the kitchen with comforting scents as they dry out. San loves that even in winter when they can’t open the windows because of the chlil they can still smell the Earth inside. 

Yeosang walks into the kitchen with a folded towel covered in freshly plucked fennel and dill stalks. “Wooyoung told me to bring these to you.”

San avoids eye contact and gestures to the countertop where he’s tying twine to the other herbs and hanging them. 

“I like the way this one smells,” Yeosang says, lifting the dill to his nose.

“Dill is my favorite herb too,” San replies, before realizing he’s speaking. 

“What do you use it for?” 

San takes one of the feathery green shoots of dill and brushes his fingertip over the tiny delicate leaves. “Medicinally it can soothe an upset stomach. Digestive issues, that sort of thing. Symbolically, I guess it was once thought to bring good fortune, but that’s pretty much nonsense now.”

“Why?” Yeosang asks, voice like a child’s when they truly don’t understand.

“I guess because we have no proof. How do you measure good fortune?”

“Does magick need proof? Isn’t that the whole reason humanity has yet to believe in what we’ve known for an eternity and beyond? Observable and tangible...most magick is neither of those things.”

San licks his dry lips and keeps his focus on the dill in his palm. “Even as a Witch, it’s hard to put faith in something so ... ”

“Coincidental?” Yeosang guesses. 

San nods, finally lifting his gaze. Yeosang is looking at him in that guarded way again, like he’s waiting for San to explode once more at him. “Dill was our Coven Supreme’s favorite herb. Not for any magickal or medicinal purposes. He just liked it for the flavor. Told us that we’re allowed to just enjoy something for what it is. Not everything has to have a specific purpose. If magick were truly all about pure cause and effect, we wouldn’t ever have taken any real risks.”

“He sounds like a wise leader. Because, of course, risks are all about not knowing what effect will occur,” Yeosang replies. “But taking the chance anyhow.”

San swallows nervously. “Is it coincidence that you’re here now?”

Yeosang holds a sprig of dill up to the light and it seems to glow from the inside, its fragrance wafting heavier and heavier from the leaves until it fills the room completely. The sprig grows, branches of endless tiny green leaves bursting from the single stalk. 

“Is it coincidence that you and I both love this scent? You love it because of an emotional connotation, the connection between you and your old Supreme, and I love it despite having no reasoning whatsoever.”

“That feels like coincidence to me,” San responds hesitantly. 

Yeosang lets the dill sprig fall to the counter in front of San, returning to its prior size, and the scent rapidly dissipates. San reaches for it for something to do, but Yeosang intercepts his movement to grab his wrist. The touch has San’s skin bursting into goosebumps. 

He wants to tear his hand away. It burns where Yeosang holds him. It burns like a wound being cauterized. Like Yeosang is opening him up with every touch and then searing the wounds closed. 

In the yard, Wooyoung is humming sweetly and trimming death away, and San just wants to hold him and forget.

“I was conjured to love you, San, even if you don’t understand,” Yeosang whispers, apprehensive. 

San shakes his head, suddenly dizzy. “I don’t believe you. That just isn’t...how this works. I have Wooyoung, and he loves me, and I can only expect...I already don’t deserve…”

Yeosang takes San’s face in his hands, holding him firmly like he expects San to try to bolt. “Look at me, please.”

San screws his eyes shut, but the light of Yeosang’s body bleeds through his eyelids. He reluctantly blinks his eyes open.

Yeosang spreads his fingers on either side of San’s face, leans forward to touch their foreheads together, and San drops his shields.

San’s eyes roll back, and it’s dark. It’s dark, but then there are stars. Scattered stars, and then he’s standing in a field--well, not standing, more like observing from somewhere neither near nor far away--watching a boy walk through the thick stalks of corn, conjuring a small light to lead him through. 

It’s San. San as a boy.

He struggles, knowing what is about to happen. But he’s stuck. Thick chains weigh his arms and legs down. There is some kind of barrier between him and the scene, like he’s watching a film reel. San as a child is running through the rows of tall corn crops, following the smoky trails of a series of falling stars. There’s one flickering above him, like it’s struggling to stay in the air. 

“Please no,” San says, but it’s Yeosang’s voice. 

San as a child stands in an open clearing, face tipped up to the dark sky, and he shuts his eyes and holds out his cupped hands. 

“Stop! San, stop!” Yeosang’s voice rings out from San’s lips as he watches. Yeosang writhes against the chains, and his cheeks are wet. Hoarsely, San keeps shouting with Yeosang’s low, gruff voice. “Please, San! Please hear me!”

For a moment, young San turns his head like he has heard. Their eyes meet, and Yeosang screams again. “San, please, you don’t need this! You are going to be so loved!”

Young San opens his mouth as if to call back, and the star in his hands drops away the false starlight around it, exposing the smoldering dark cloud beneath it. The smoke slithers through San’s parted lips, choking him before he can fight it. Yeosang is still screaming through present-day San’s mouth, and San watches his younger self faint there in the clearing. His body radiates a sinister-looking dark smoke for a few moments before it settles into his skin, his bones. 

The darkness was dormant inside him for years before it learned how to manipulate him. Before it learned that San would do anything to keep Wooyoung safe. Before it learned that San has a quick temper if it means protecting those he loves.

Before it learned that love could be a weapon.

Everything fades back to black, and San thinks it’s over. But he can’t open his eyes in his body, can only see what Yeosang wants him to see. 

He’s following behind Eden now, along a dirt path toward Eden’s cabin in the woods. “I promise you’ll love the other boys. They helped me find you.”

San can’t imagine loving anything. Nothing has ever loved him. 

The door swings open, and there’s a boy there, maybe around thirteen or fourteen, and his cheeks are soft and round. His nose is almost too big for his face, and when he smiles, he looks like a cartoon, features almost too animated for a real human face. 

“Oh, you’re here,” he says, and there’s a warm fire flickering behind him inside. San can feel the heat tickling his chilled skin. “I’m the one who found you!” the boy chirps excitedly. “You were in my dream!” He’s waving his arms around, gesturing wildly like he’s trying to illustrate the scene. “You were by the side of a river, holding a three-legged toad, and you held it up to me and asked how you could help it.”

“I remember,” San replies, and he does. “I felt the trees rustle around me, like they were dancing.”

“That was me,” the boy explains, and he’s grinning with pride. “Well, come in! Seonghwa is making stew, and we made sure to have nine servings.”

“Seonghwa…?”

“He’s the eldest of your new Coven, San,” Eden says, a hand pressed to San’s back between his shoulder blades, and San moves through the doorway, feeling first the heat of the fire and then immediately feeling Wooyoung’s curious gaze on his skin. 

“I’m Wooyoung. We’re the same age. Just so you know. We can be best friends.”

San has never met anyone his age before. He hasn’t spent much time around other kids. He’s certainly never had a best friend.

Wooyoung takes him by the hand, and it’s like static shock. An inexplicable feeling shooting through him, and he’s sure Wooyoung felt it too. 

“Oh,” San breathes out suddenly, like the air has been forced out of him. 

Wooyoung looks down at their hands and then up at San’s face. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he says, and beneath Wooyoung’s voice, there’s a lower tone, something deep like molasses. Something familiar.

The sound of far-away pleading cries from years ago. Something ringing out among the mountains where he grew up, telling him that someday he will be loved. 

“Thank you,” San says dumbly, tongue heavy in his mouth.

Wooyoung tips his head to the side like a puppy, and San wonders if this is what love is. Is it this instant electric current? Is it the way something so new can somehow feel so familiar?

“You’re funny,” Wooyoung replies, giggling behind his free hand. “I’m glad I found you.” And it goes dark again.

Wooyoung is there when San’s eyes open again. Both he and Yeosang have their hands on him, steadying him as he returns to his flesh. 

“You’ve always been here,” San murmurs. 

Yeosang’s eyes are brimming with tears, and he nods, letting the tears drip down with gravity as he moves. 

“You brought us to each other so we would find you,” San says. 

Yeosang bites his quivering lower lip. “I don’t know about that. I was more of a passenger on your journey, waiting to be noticed.”

“Sannie--” Wooyoung breathes out. “What did you see?”

“Yeosang showed me--he showed me the night we met,” San swallows thickly. “And I heard him in your voice. He was always there. Guiding us.”

Wooyoung throws his arms around Yeosang, whose face has crumpled up in quiet hiccuping sobs. “Thank you, Yeosangie. Thank you for being so patient with us.”

Yeosang’s arms hang at his sides, and he looks at San from over Wooyoung’s shoulder, like he’s asking for permission.

There’s a twinge of something dark and envious at the base of San’s spine, but Yeosang’s eyes are so open and honest and...loving.

Yeosang was made to love them. 

“You can touch him,” San says, taking Yeosang’s hands and placing them around Wooyoung’s waist. “Do you want to touch him?”

Yeosang presses in closer, dropping his face to Wooyoung’s shoulder, whole body shaking. 

“No one has ever…”

“No one has ever touched you?”

“Not like this. Not like... _ holding _ me.”

San thinks of Yeosang in the darkness behind that barricade, limbs weighted down uselessly, watching a soul he was fated to belong to become corrupted. He thinks of Yeosang serving souls before them and never once being held. 

“What a lonesome creature you must’ve been,” Wooyoung coos, petting his hands through Yeosang’s hair gently. “Do you want us to hold you more?”

“Closer,” Yeosang mutters against Wooyoung’s throat. “Please.”

Yeosang is glowing and golden again when they lay him out bare on their bed and Wooyoung kisses him slow and gentle and sweet. 

Wooyoung sits back on his haunches beside Yeosang on the bed, and he reaches out for San. 

San hesitates only a split second before climbing up over Yeosang and pressing their lips together. He’s much less gentle than Wooyoung had been, parting Yeosang’s lips with his tongue and licking into his open mouth. 

Yeosang arches up beneath him like it’s already too much, just having his bare skin so close to another creature’s. Wooyoung lifts San’s sweater from behind, up and off of him, and Yeosang whimpers when San’s skin meets his own. 

When San looks down beneath him, Yeosang is practically shaking, gripping the sheets on either side of his body to keep himself as still as he can. 

“Hey,” San says, thumbing under Yeosang’s soft chin. “It’s okay. You can touch me.”

Yeosang gasps and slides his hands up San’s sides, over his ribs and down his bare arms. Starting shy and growing more confident as he goes. His breath is quick and staccato through his parted lips. 

“He’s so sensitive,” San observes. “Just like you, baby.”

Wooyoung crawls closer, kissing San deep right over Yeosang, who moans at the sight.

“I was always so envious,” Yeosang admits. “Watching you and knowing I should be there with you.”

“It must’ve been so hard, sweetheart,” Wooyoung coos, curving down to kiss him again and again. 

“Do you want us to touch you like that?” San asks gingerly. “Like how Woo and I do it?”

Yeosang swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing. “I don’t know if I can...I don’t know if--”

“How about we start you slowly? Sannie can fuck me, and I’ll touch you, so you can be a part of it.”

San swats at Wooyoung’s ass. “You just wanna get fucked.”

Wooyoung smirks slyly. “I’ve been caught.”

Yeosang is quiet, and then there’s the soft chime of laughter beneath them. “I envied that, too. The easy way you communicate.”

“Most of the time, our conversations are just Woo being loud and annoying,” San says.

Wooyoung spins around, jumping and pinning San to the bed beside Yeosang. San could fight him if he wanted to. But he loves the triumphant way Wooyoung crows his victory. 

“You love how loud and annoying I am,” Wooyoung teases, flicking San in the nose. “It gets you off when I’m mouthy.”

San can’t protest the truth, so he just grabs the waistband of Wooyoung’s leggings and yanks them down to grip his mostly soft cock in his fist. He feels Wooyoung buck against him, hardening as San squeezes him gently. 

Yeosang whines, and they look over at him. He’s flushed pink all the way down to his chest, his brown nipples hard. “Sorry, I…I can feel it.”

San gives another experimental tug on Wooyoung’s cock, and Yeosang writhes, choking on a moan. 

“I can feel him in my hand, and I can a-also feel your hand like it’s around me,” Yeosang explains weakly.

“Oh,” San breathes out. “This will be interesting then.” He brushes a precum-slick finger over Wooyoung’s hole, and both Wooyoung and Yeosang whine. 

San lazily conjures the lube from beneath the bed and makes it drizzle itself over his fingers. Wooyoung is easy to loosen up, since he never holds tension in his muscles like San does. San gets two fingers inside him, and Yeosang’s breath catches. 

“He’s so warm inside,” Yeosang murmurs, his own cock dripping precum against his belly now. “And it feels--he feels so good.”

San pinches Wooyoung’s thigh and urges him off his lap. “Hands and knees, baby.” 

Yeosang shifts up against the headboard, carefully watching and wriggling every so often when San touches Wooyoung a certain way. His bare feet slide against the sheets, toes curling, when San eventually works four fingers into Wooyoung.

Wooyoung is loud, but San can still hear Yeosang reacting in tandem. His cock is so hard and heavy against his belly, and San can’t believe how much he wants him. It doesn’t seem possible.

It has to be a trick.

No, Yeosang loves them. San has seen it. 

But how can two souls love someone like San?

San fucks into Wooyoung quickly, emptying his mind of any other thoughts. Wooyoung chokes on a high squeaky moan, his whole body rocking forward with each thrust. 

“Don’t leave Yeosang out, baby,” San instructs. “Show him what that mouth does when you’re quiet for once.”

Wooyoung wraps his soft little fingers around Yeosang’s cock, and the three of them jolt at once.

“I feel--” 

“I forgot to mention,” Yeosang groans, shuddering, “you will feel me too.”

“Oh.”

“ _ Oh _ .”

Wooyoung flicks his tongue under the head of Yeosang’s dick, and all three of them hum a moan in unison.

“We’re going to all come in like a minute,” Wooyoung whines. 

San holds Wooyoung’s hips tightly and angles his hips, knowing just where to move to make Wooyoung give a sharp squeal of pleasure. 

“Put your hands in my hair, Yeosangie,” Wooyoung pants, and Yeosang slowly slides his fingertips up and grips them into his hair. “Hold on,” he instructs. 

And then his lips sink down. 

San doesn’t know what to focus on. He doesn’t need to focus at all, honestly. Everything is heightened as he experiences the rush from both sides at once. Wooyoung is clenching around him, and San can feel his throat working over Yeosang in tandem. 

“I--” Yeosang is squirming, tugging at Wooyoung’s hair, which just makes Wooyoung hum a throaty moan around his cock. San feels the vibrations, and nearly whites out. “Don’t stop, please, I--”

Wooyoung’s throat is making these obscene wet sounds as Yeosang’s hips rut up, pushing his cock deeper past his lips. San presses the pad of his thumb against Wooyoung’s entrance beside his cock, slowing his thrusts so he can work it inside the way Woo likes when he’s close to coming. The way that makes his spine arch deep, shoulder blades sharp and powerful as they pull together beneath his skin. Wooyoung pulls off Yeosang to stroke him hard and tight and fast, panting too hard to keep him in his mouth. 

“I can’t breathe,” Yeosang gasps. “I’m--”

“It’s okay, sweetheart. Go ahead.”

Yeosang writhes and drops his head back, cock pulsing in Wooyoung’s hand as he spills his release over his fingers. San doesn’t expect the way his body reacts to it, everything tightening up at once and making his hips thrust erratically as his orgasm hits just after Yeosang’s. Wooyoung is crying out loudly as he’s filled, and San pulls out quickly to watch his come spill messily from Wooyoung’s hole. He fucks his fingers back inside, finding Wooyoung’s prostate and milking his orgasm out of him with each firm press against it. He shouts, like he always does when he comes untouched like this. And then Wooyoung collapses, body heavy, and Yeosang wraps his arms around him, clutching their bodies tightly together. 

San, kneeling on the bed in front of them, feels something in his chest begin to loosen. It feels warm, where he presses his palm over his breastplate. Yeosang smiles, sated and sweet, up at him, and San smiles back. He feels loved. 

And then the world shifts. 

He blinks, and in the split second between his eyes closing and opening, Yeosang’s sweet smile turns sinister. Everything has a reddish haze. Yeosang holds San’s precious person, smirking like he owns him, and San wants to will him back into nothingness. 

San was given Wooyoung, the only creature who could love him, and now this stranger is asking for love too. San has always loved his one precious person. And he won’t allow anyone or anything to take that love away. 

His eyes roll back, and he falls backward off the bed. 

He can’t feel his body.

It’s never been this bad. 

Something dark slithers up over his tongue, and it uses San’s voice to declare, “You can’t have him.”

Wooyoung bolts upright, sensing that something is terribly, horribly wrong. “Hey, Sannie. Sannie look at me. Please, Sannie.”

Eyes that are San’s but aren’t really turn to Wooyoung. 

“He isn’t trying to take me,” Wooyoung says, grabbing Yeosang’s hand tightly. “He’s here with us both. He’s ours.”

San’s laughter bubbles out between his lips, but it isn’t his laughter at all. “San hasn’t ever been yours. Not really.”

“What are you--? San?”

Yeosang leaps up and puts himself between Wooyoung and San’s body. “He isn’t yours. You’re not strong enough to hold him like this,” Yeosang hisses, body glowing brighter and brighter, burning San’s eyes. Burning at the darkness. “He has fought you for so many years already. Even as a child he was strong enough to subdue your influence.”

“I have eroded away so much of him to make a home here in this boy, and now he has no idea which parts of himself are his or mine.”

“I knew it,” Wooyoung says, trembling. “There’s something inside him. Something evil.”

“We could be happy together,” The darkness inside San says. “I’ve been here with you the whole time too, Woo baby.”

Wooyoung backs up. “No.”

“It was me fucking you, too. Me telling you how much I love you.”

Wooyoung doubles over like he might be sick. He shakes his head frantically, waves of terrified magic hovering around him protectively.

San wants to tear this darkness away from himself and go to him. 

“I’m here now,” Yeosang growls. “San called me to get rid of you. He’s ready to be free.”

“Because you did such a good job keeping him from me in the first place, hm? He was so open, waiting for me. He wanted something to guide him.”

“You can’t have him anymore.”

Golden light fills the room, so bright that San feels weightless. Yeosang shouts as the light grows brighter and brighter and then the darkness in San is also screaming through San’s mouth. 

“He belongs to me,” San’s lips form the words, and then San’s fingers are snapping, and San’s body is wrenching apart into endless pieces, and he’s gone. 

He hears the aborted shouts of Wooyoung and Yeosang distantly, and then it’s dark.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: sorry for making you all wait like...half a year for this. my excuses are endless, but instead of giving them, I instead give you my eternal devotion for waiting patiently, and I hope you enjoy the conclusion of this story. It's no epic odyssey, but it's precious to me because it allowed me to express some things that have been difficult to say before. 
> 
> as always, comments and kudos appreciated immensely and please follow me on twitter @likesatellitez if you wanna chat/yell at me

Yeosang’s first memory of San, he thinks, is of laughter. Yeosang isn’t sure how long he spent drifting in and out of realms, seeking to be found, seeking to speak or touch or feel, before he heard it. It was gurgled, like from an infant with a mouth full of tongue he isn’t sure how to use and spit he can’t keep from overflowing from his lips, but it was laughter. Yeosang had spent so long in this brightless, soundless space that he’d forgotten what human laughter sounded like.

It was strange. High and squealing and almost like a sob.

But Yeosang found purpose in that sound.

Finally.

Yeosang reaches to touch Wooyoung’s cheek in the way he’s seen San do so many times. It seems to comfort Wooyoung when he does it. Well, when San does it.

Yeosang instead feels wetness against his fingers. Wooyoung is crying.

Yeosang clutches him tighter, pulling his body in closer and closer, as if to envelop Wooyoung whole and keep him safe there inside himself.

“He’s gone,” Wooyoung croaks, chest hiccoughing with sobs that wrench themselves from his diaphragm.

Laughter and sobbing really aren’t that different, are they.

“He’s not. I can still feel him,” Yeosang assuages. “We’ll get him back.”

Wooyoung’s body is shaking violently, and Yeosang can feel his Magick reacting to the sorrow. The urge to do something, anything, to get the sobbing to end is just...all-consuming.

“I’ll bring him back.”

“It’s so cold. It’s so cold, and I need him. I need him, Yeosang, _ please _.”

“Hey, shhh, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

“I’m so cold,” Wooyoung whimpers, trembling so hard he can’t even move.

Yeosang lifts him from the ground. “Let’s get warm, okay? I’ve got you, Woo. It’s going to be okay.”

Yeosang has cared for people before, he’s sure. That’s what he was created to do. 

He fills the bathtub with hot water. The room fills with steam. 

Wooyoung shivers even after climbing into the full tub of what should be scalding water. His skin turns bright, angry red, but he keeps shaking. He reaches out.

Yeosang climbs in behind him and holds him, skin to skin. It takes a few moments, but eventually Wooyoung stills. He tips his head, and Yeosang presses his lips to the back of Wooyoung’s neck. 

“I want to,” Wooyoung says throatily, tears hanging on his cupid’s bow and dripping into his mouth and the tub water. “Home. He needs to come home.”

“I will bring him home,” Yeosang promises. He hugs Wooyoung closer to himself and etches that promise into everything that he is. Everything that makes him. 

“We,” Wooyoung corrects, grabbing Yeosang by the hand.

Yeosang can feel Wooyoung’s Magick like sweet spring air. Yeosang has always loved that about him, how his Magick is almost...tasteable. Like cherry blossom trees heavy with blooms and pollen, carelessly tossing petals in a pre-rain breeze. The feeling just before an April storm, when the air is thick and warm and syrupy.

Yeosang gives a nod. “Mm. We.”

They hold each other as they sleep. Wooyoung doesn’t want to be in his and San’s bed, so they lay together on the couch. Yeosang tucks his face in against Wooyoung’s bare chest and listens to his breath. Listens to the deep, rhythmic sound of his mortal heart. He’s so warm. So soft. Yeosang can’t sleep, so he watches the way Wooyoung’s eyelids twitch in sleep. The way his lips part on a gasp, like for a moment he needed more air. Couldn’t get enough. So vulnerable. 

Wooyoung wakes just after dawn. Yeosang grew restless around 4am or so, pacing around the gardens and listening to the soft, anguished whispers from the earth. The plants miss San. Yeosang sympathizes. Promises he’ll bring San home. It isn’t much, but the plants seem to trust him. 

When Yeosang sits on the back steps out to the garden and leans his head against the wooden panels of the house behind him, he feels the House attempt to offer him comfort. She is weak, missing half of the pair that inherited her and maintain her. Yeosang presses his palm to a peeling panel of wood and sends Magick deep into the foundation of the House. She drinks gratefully. 

Yeosang is sitting at the kitchen table when Wooyoung pads over in nothing but loose, low-slung sweatpants, bare feet quiet on the hardwood floors. Yeosang made tea from the dry herbs he and San hung in the kitchen. Dried lavender and chamomile, with some lemon peel and honey. 

Wordlessly, he slides the cup toward Wooyoung across the table. He’d kept it hot between his cupped hands. 

Wooyoung sits, chair somehow jarringly loud as it slides over the floorboards. They both wince. 

“Thank you,” Wooyoung murmurs, bringing the cup to his lips. He takes a moment to just breathe in the calming scented steam. “San makes this for me.” He pauses. Bites at the inside of his cheek. “Made. I mean.”

Yeosang reaches across the table and touches Wooyoung’s free hand gently. “He taught me. And he will make it for you again. I promise, Woo. Truly.”

Wooyoung gives a weak smile. “It’s been so long since I’ve been without him. From the day he joined the Coven, I have always been near him. Even when we didn’t speak, when he was too shy to even approach us, just feeling him nearby felt like...like so _ much _. I can’t explain it.”

“He fills the air. Like a magnet. His presence is heavy.” 

Wooyoung huffs out a laugh. “That’s right. You’re good with words, Yeosangie.”

“I’ve had a long time to think about these things, and I’m only now able to actually express them,” Yeosang admits. 

“I apologize for all the dumb shit San and I made you see. We made a lot of stupid decisions.”

“Yes, I remember the soup mess.”

“Soup mess?” Wooyoung’s eyes light up in recognition. “Oh my _ Goddess _, when Mingi dared us to mix together all the soups leftover in the Coven fridge and serve it to Eden to see if he’d notice.”

“I recall that Jongho actually thought it was pretty tolerable,” Yeosang adds. 

“Woof,” Wooyoung mutters. “Do you ever wish you were summoned by someone with their shit together?”

Yeosang lets himself think about it. He can’t fathom it. “I can’t fathom it,” he says. “Honestly.”

Wooyoung leans back in his chair and gives an aborted laugh. “You’re a little weirdo yourself, aren’t you, Yeosangie?”

Yeosang lets himself think about this too. He remembers laughing, sometimes, when he watched Wooyoung and San’s lives. Like he was in on the jokes. Like he would have laughed until his body collapsed onto them with the force of each sound from his throat. Like he understood them. 

“I think so,” Yeosang replies, smiling back. “I think we are perfectly suited.” 

They spend the day in the little room San turned into a library by filling it with woodworked shelves stuffed with thick tomes of Magickal history, literature, theory…

“San is kind of a nerd,” Wooyoung admits, climbing one of the sliding wooden ladders along the walls. “Can you push me over that way a little?” 

Yeosang slides Wooyoung’s ladder to where Wooyoung points. Wooyoung passes his hand over a row of books before gasping and drawing out a large black leather-bound book. “If this book can’t help us summon San home, I don’t know what else would.”

The book has a heavy coldness around it. Darker Magicks that require life Magicks to work. Magick spells with hidden loopholes that can bind their users deep in that dark coldness for eternities. 

“Woo,” Yeosang starts.

Wooyoung cuts a look at him, and that’s when Yeosang realizes: Wooyoung is going to do this whether Yeosang helps him or not. Wooyoung is going to target and conjure that demon. 

“What are you even planning?” 

Wooyoung thumbs at the dust on the leather spine. “I’ll figure that part out once I see that San is safe.”

Yeosang reaches for Wooyoung’s wrist, clutching at it like a plea. “The repercussions of this on your Soul, Woo--I don’t think you _ understand _\--”

“No, _ you _ don’t understand!” Wooyoung cries, voice breaking at the ends like unraveling threads. His eyes brim with tears. “San would not even hesitate to do this for me. Not a single second. To hesitate feels like betrayal. San is _ my person _. I will do anything, absolutely anything in my power…”

Yeosang hears the words _ my person _ ringing around inside his skull. He’s always known himself as an outsider. In every lifetime, Yeosang will be an outsider. 

But something about Wooyoung and San felt different. 

Or maybe that was just...hope. 

“Your person,” Yeosang repeats aloud. 

Wooyoung’s eyes soften quickly. “Oh, Yeosang, that’s not what I mea--”

“It’s fine,” Yeosang cuts off. “Please, don’t...I know that loving someone for most of your life will always be more than. Than...I mean. I just mean. It’s fine. I understand.”

“You understand because you love him too. I know you do. You are a creature born of love, Yeosang. I’m sorry. I promise I didn’t mean to imply--”

Yeosang touches Wooyoung again, palm to cheek, the way he likes. Yeosang has noticed that’s a thing between them, Wooyoung and San. The palm is intimate, especially for witches. A connection from Magick to the Body to the World resides in the palm.

It hurts, to feel so loved and yet feel like it isn’t enough. 

“Let’s find the spell, okay?” Yeosang offers. 

Wooyoung smiles, small and unconvinced. “Together.”

“Together.”

The spell is a lot. Even just trying the words, Wooyoung chokes, coughing up blood into his hands. Yeosang panics, holding Wooyoung and feeding him Magick until Wooyoung can try again. 

He almost reaches the end, and his entire body is trembling. Everything about him is rejecting the words. Even just reading them without speaking causes Wooyoung to seize up, rushing to the bathroom to vomit more blood. 

Yeosang tries to get him to stop. Says he’ll read the words for Wooyoung, but Wooyoung is adamant. 

He lights the ceremonial candles as Yeosang draws the chalk outline of the circle on the floorboards. Yeosang adds some salt around the edges, just in case. This Magick is so clearly out of Wooyoung’s power level, especially with his emotional vulnerability.

Yeosang himself has never dealt with this kind of demon before. An inheritor demon, looking to possess a Magickal body, corrupt it, and then consume. Some demons simply want to consume. Others simply want to possess. Others to corrupt.

But all three…

That takes patience. The kind of patience most demons don’t have. Years and years of patience, cultivating the corruption until it is hard to tell where the Soul ends and the Darkness begins.

He won’t voice it aloud, but Yeosang is frightened.

Wooyoung is shivering now, sat beside the wood-burning stove, a number of blankets Yeosang had gathered from around the house draped heavily over his shoulders.

“Hey,” Yeosang says, gingerly, softly, taking the spot beside Wooyoung in front of the fire and wishing he were brave enough to take his hand. “We can wait for the ceremony. Do it tomorrow. You need to rest. Your Magick won’t be able to hold this kind of dangerous Summon like this. San wouldn’t want you to harm yourself this way.”

Wooyoung’s cheeks are red, trails of active and dry tears along his skin. He’s silent somehow. None of the choking sobs from the night before. Yeosang isn’t sure what’s worse, sadness that makes its presence obvious or sadness that lingers silently.

“San is strong,” Yeosang offers. “Strong enough to hold off that much Darkness for so long. He would want you to sleep.”

“But it got him eventually, didn’t it?”

Yeosang shakes his head. “No, he’s not gone. I can still feel him. _ Him _ him, and not the demon inside him. They feel different, despite residing in the same body. San himself...he feels--”

“Overwhelming,” Wooyoung finishes.

“Yeah,” Yeosang murmurs. “Like smoke. It’s...subtle, at first. He can make himself unnoticeable if he wants to. But then he’s there. He fills the room, and all you can do is breathe him in.”

Wooyoung finally turns to him. He gives a weak smile and touches his hand to Yeosang’s cheek. 

When Wooyoung cradles Yeosang’s cheek in his palm, Yeosang can feel the way Wooyoung’s Magick is trying to comfort him, despite Wooyoung needing far more comfort than him. Yeosang grabs for Wooyoung’s hand and instead presses their palms together, threading their fingers and holding him tight.

“I’m going to fix this,” Yeosang declares in a whisper into the quiet darkness of the room. “I won’t leave you alone.”

Wooyoung turns to him, brows knit. “I’m not alone.” He squeezes their hands together, as if to say, ‘see?’ “We can work together. Bring him home.”

Yeosang pulls Wooyoung to him, Wooyoung’s back to his chest, Yeosang’s arms around his middle. He has been waiting to hold Wooyoung forever. Beyond forever. But he would have kept waiting, waited until every living creature alive in this realm had passed on and new life had begun and ended and on and on into oblivion...if it meant Wooyoung would still have San here with him.

Yeosang had broken them. He’d broken the careful balance they’d maintained for years and years. Just by existing here with them. By attempting to fit himself in. By becoming greedy for more than just a role as their guardian.

Magick is finicky when it comes to balance. To claim your Magick is Pure, you must also allow in some level of Darkness. Your spirit cannot know what Purity is without seeing what It is Not.

He knows his presence drew the demon out, disrupted that careful balancing act that San had worked so hard to perform. San was in danger, has been in danger since he was a child, but would he have been safe enough to stay with Wooyoung for their mortal lives had Yeosang not appeared? Had he left them alone, simply watched from afar and not wished for more?

Yeosang will take responsibility. 

He had always planned on doing whatever he could to excise the darkness from San’s spirit, but now he has to reconcile the idea that he may not be able to stay to see if he succeeds.

Wooyoung, weak from attempting such vile Magick, falls asleep beside the crackling fire, and Yeosang carefully lifts him onto the couch. When he's awake, Wooyoung is so lively and bright. Even when he isn't speaking, he's _ loud _. But asleep, Wooyoung feels entirely different. Soft, with his cheek pillowed up beneath his eye where he rests against the couch cushion. It's odd to see his face so calm, so emotionless. He must be so exhausted. Yeosang knows that even in sleep, humans make expressions, tiny movements caused by misfiring nerves. Wooyoung is always clutching at someone in sleep, San or otherwise.

Even now his fingers twitch against the couch cushion, seeking...

His brow furrows. His lips part. He whines.

Yeosang can't stay. Wooyoung’s pain is invading every part of him, and Yeosang can taste it on his tongue like a poison.

Yeosang can't stay...

The ceremonial circle is already drawn, so Yeosang lights the candles and kneels in the center. He holds the ceremonial knife that San and Wooyoung use for innocuous Magick like peeling dead bark from a branch to cure a garden of destructive pests.

To summon a demon, you have to provide it with strong life Magick. Something to tempt it.

Yeosang draws the blade over his palm, the same palm he'd touched to Wooyoung's cheek earlier, and lets the blood run down his skin and onto the floor. Light bursts from the chalk-drawn lines on the wood, and Yeosang hears the gasp of the Home's spirit as the blood sinks in.

Magick is so often about intention. Rarely does it require speech. Some of the greatest witches in history were either born without the ability to speak or had the ability stolen from them. There was a time when humans believed that Magick's origin was in Words themselves. So to cut off the source of Magick, they thought, you had to cut off the source of speech.

Tongue-less witches, unfortunately for those foolish humans, are no less capable than others.

So Yeosang presses his bleeding palm to the floor, ignoring the frightened trembling from the House, and he thinks of San while repeating the words Wooyoung couldn’t manage to utter. He thinks of San until he can feel the hairs raise on his forearms and the back of his neck. Until the air is thick and hot like breathing in boiling water. He coughs, more blood splattering into the circle, feeding the spell.

Yeosang’s skin catches fire, and it licks up every inch of him, and it isn’t until he watches his own blood spilling upward into the air that he realises he isn’t summoning the demon.

The demon is summoning him.

Everything goes dark and then bright, bright white. The whiteness of nonexistence. Of emptiness. 

Yeosang is slammed back down into solid form so hard that his vision swims for what feels like minutes. Once it’s righted itself, Yeosang sees that he’s in a large stone room, something like a cellar. He wonders if this is where the demon resided when it was whatever creature it was before falling to Darkness, or if it had been lurking here alone, waiting for any unsuspecting creature to send out their Magick into the universe for help. He wonders if it looked for San, all those years. 

San is here. He’s laid, immobile and so, so terrifyingly pale, on a large stone pedestal in the center of the room. Surrounded by lanterns burning scalding blue flames. 

“San,” Yeosang calls aloud. His voice echoes in the hollow room. San doesn’t stir. 

“I’m right here.” 

It’s San’s voice. He strides through the open doorway, but Yeosang knows immediately that it isn’t really San. The pale, unmoving figure on the stone slab is San. 

“Release him,” Yeosang declares, hands clenching into tight fists at his sides. “He’s too good for you. Go find someone horrid, someone cold and weak, like you were made for.”

The demon with San’s face taps San’s pretty fingers against his chin. “No, I don’t think I will. I quite like this boy. He was so willing to accept me, desperate for protection and power, something to shield him from his own loneliness and fear. He let me in so easily, and I’ve never felt so much tightly-contained Magick.” 

“Unlike you and I, San has people who care about him. People who need him. His Magick is _ for _ something. Has purpose. You and I are creatures that the universe neither needs nor wants. If I can give you what you want, will you release him?”

The demon sits beside San’s body on the stone slab, crossing his legs and leaning back in such an un-San-like pose that Yeosang feels sick. “How could you possibly offer me something better than this? I’ve done something most demons could never even dream of. I have Become.”

“San is Limited, like all mortal creatures. I am Unlimited.” Yeosang strides forward, and the demon doesn’t flinch as Yeosang cups the demon (San)’s face gently. Yeosang desperately wishes that this were actually San. That he could lean in and press their lips together and say _ let’s go home _. 

His palm burns where their skin touches, but Yeosang can immediately feel the demon tugging at his life Magick, hungry for it. 

It gasps, San’s lips parting in genuine surprise and shock. It looks ravenously up at Yeosang, latching onto his wrist and clutching at Yeosang’s Magick with San’s shaking hands, suddenly insatiable. 

“You’ll release him,” Yeosang declares again. “And you’ll have me.”

It licks its lips, an eerie smile stretching across San’s face. “You have a deal.”

The demon touches a finger to San’s forehead, eyes fluttering shut. San sits up, drawing in a gasping breath that breaks into a scream. He looks over, eyes wide and terrified, before he sees Yeosang. He opens his mouth to speak but then bursts into blue flame and is gone. 

Yeosang reaches out and feels for his soul. It flickers for a moment before glowing, glorious and bright, back in his home realm. 

Yeosang turns and sees the dark, bodiless figure of the demon. Well, more like he _ doesn’t see _. It is a black hole in the room. It has no form. It is the absence of form. It is a hunger for form.

“Now then,” it breathes, slithering over Yeosang’s throat and constricting. “I hope that boy is worth it.”

Yeosang has only gotten the chance to touch him so recently and so briefly, but he knows he was created for this. He was summoned into existence so that he may one day save a boy so profoundly good and strong that he swallowed a fallen star in order to protect his heart... to protect his heart so that he may one day feel love. 

Yeosang has only just gotten the chance to really know Wooyoung and San, but he feels at peace somehow. After all those years of watching them from a prison of neither Being nor Not Being, Yeosang feels at peace because all he ever wanted was for Wooyoung and San to be together. To be safe. 

It would be far too greedy of him to feel sorrow for losing the chance to be with them longer. As a familiar, it is his responsibility to protect them, to ensure their Magicks live on, together.

“He is,” Yeosang murmurs. “He always will be.”

Time is meaningless here, but Yeosang knows some has certainly passed. He’s trapped in Magick chains again, heavy pressure on his body that renders him immobile, paralyzed. It allows the demon to come and go, stealing bits of his Magick and then leaving him again in the dark, alone.

His only comfort is the ability to reach out and feel Wooyoung and San like faroff stars, strong and alive and together. 

Having the demon tearing at the fabrics of his Magick hurts. Of course it hurts. Like being peeled open with a thin paring knife. Spirals of his Magick torn off, slowly, to draw out the agony of it. 

The worst of it, he knows, is that Yeosang is Unlimited. This demon will keep him here forever. He will never see or feel anything but the sensation of a black hole ripping at his Soul over and over, ad infinitum. 

No. He thinks about Wooyoung. About the way his laugh seems to shift the air around it, making room for the full body of its round bubble of sound. 

About San. The way he speaks with his whole body, drawing other bodies closer to him with an arm around their middles, wanting to have everyone close, to know they’re safe and present. 

Wooyoung. His coloring book of unfinished art because none of the Crayola colors are good enough for the moments he wants to draw. 

San. How he can smile at a wilted pear blossom and charm it to bloom. 

Wooyoung.

San.

Woo…

Things start to blur. Yeosang starts to blur. 

He becomes coherent again when he feels the demon coil around his throat and constrict, sinking fangs into him to suck more and more Magick than ever before, like it can no longer be satiated by what it had been feeding on. 

Yeosang has never died. It is nearly impossible to kill him. He is entirely life Magick. 

But he wants it to end.

“Just take it all,” Yeosang pleads. “Just take me.”

The demon is reluctant. Wants to keep him, have a constant source of Magick, sustaining him like a true parasite. 

Yeosang can feel his stars again. He knows they have names, but he can’t recall. He can feel them, though, every once in a while, can feel the way they send their Magicks out to find him, like shining a bright light into a dark, endless cavern. He wants to feel the light on his skin. If he even still has skin. If he even still has--

Did he ever?

He did. He’s certain. He had skin, and it had been caressed so carefully and gently by warm hands. Hands that lit him up from the inside like a kettle of water made to boil, hot bubbles rising up into every part of him and making him feel finally warm. 

He had hands too. He remembers the sensation of the contours of his palms molding to soft, flushed cheeks. He remembers the way it felt to cry and be held for the first time. Catharsis. Like his tears weren’t a sign of weakness. Like they were good and natural. Like _ he _ was good and _ he _ was natural. 

The demon makes to draw away, finished eating, but Yeosang is so exhausted. 

“Take me,” he hisses, shivering as his body clutches at the demon, trying to force him inside. Yeosang pushes everything that he is outwards, expanding, enveloping. Like swallowing something with sharp spines that pierce every inch of him, that find parts of him deep, deep down within a Soul to slice at to make a home inside. 

This must’ve been what he felt. 

The star. All he had wanted was the strength to keep going. To find something better.

It scrapes at him, the Dark hunger digging claws beneath his skin, and Yeosang screams. He screams and screams, yanking the demon deeper and deeper into himself until he’s surrounding it. 

Yeosang is Unlimited. The demon is not. 

Can you fill a vessel with all the water that has been or will ever be?

There’s a moment where the distant stars call his name, and he knows them. His boys. 

Wooyoung. 

San. 

And then he is consumed.

Yeosang wakes. The ground beneath him is gritty. Salt. 

It’s bright behind his eyelids. Flames flickering in a ring of candles. 

“Oh Goddess,” a voice sobs, “it worked. Sannie, it worked--”

Yeosang blinks his eyes open. 

They’re naked, clutching each other close, hair matted with sweat to their foreheads.

His stars.

His boys.

Wooyoung and San. 

“Took you long enough,” Yeosang speaks, voice like gravel. 

They collapse onto him, pulling him in against their warm bodies, and the others are there too, Yeosang notes, the Coven. Wooyoung and San hold him, and everything is so much all at once. He chokes on a sob that breaks into full-bodied sobs, and they continue holding him. 

“You’re home,” they say. “You’re home, Yeosang.”

Epilogue: 

“I told you how much I resent this, right?” Yeosang grits out. 

Wooyoung ties a red ribbon around Yeosang’s forehead. Their team colors. Wooyoung and San both also have red ribbons around their heads. 

Beside them, Mingi ties an orange ribbon onto little Mingi’s head. Aurora cannot hold a ribbon, but her wings glow purple around her tiny body, and Hongjoong wears a purple ribbon to match. The Coven and their Familiars. 

His Coven now, too. 

He learned that he’d been gone for a stretch of two Earth years. In that time, the Coven tried every full moon to summon Yeosang back. Yeosang’s memories of that period are hazy, which is likely for the best. Whenever the ghost sensation of being ripped into by an unfathomable Darkness begins to come back to him, Yeosang has learned to reach out for comfort.

Like they can sense it now, too, members of the Coven will come and hold him. Yeosang knows them by the way they hold him. Yunho, who hugs like a big, soft bear, strong arms squeezing behind Yeosang’s back. Hongjoong who is seemingly so small in stature but hugs like he wants to instill you with the knowledge that you are cared for beyond your wildest imagination. Jongho, who will lift Yeosang off the ground and spin him around in circles until Yeosang laughs full-bodied and warm. 

Now that Yeosang is comfortable with it. It’s nice, he thinks, to just be held. 

“Is everyone ready?” Jongho calls out from the porch. 

Wooyoung kisses Yeosang’s cheek. “Don’t let us down, baby.”

San kisses the other cheek. “Honestly, it’ll be really embarrassing if you lose to a bird, sloth, butterfly, or corgi, so...for your own pride’s sake: don’t lose.”

“You’re both going to pay for this,” Yeosang hisses grumpily. 

Wooyoung looks over and San and waggles his eyebrows. “Oh, I sure hope so.”

“Coven, disperse!” Jongho announces. 

The boys turn and run into the forest. After a few moments, Jongho calls again:

“Familiars, are you ready?” 

Yeosang looks beside him as Aurora floats around AngBi’s head like the world’s most annoying baby mobile. Mingi is on the start line just fully splayed out, seemingly asleep. Pancake has his nose to the ground, little snout ready to sniff out his Master. 

Yeosang hates this with every fiber of his being. 

“Familiars: find your Master…s. Sorry Yeosangie.”

Yeosang rolls his eyes. 

They aren’t supposed to use any Magick aside from the natural pull of their connections. Pancake runs off, tiny legs tripping over tree roots. Aurora and AngBi fly off. 

Yeosang sighs. 

Before he reaches them, he hears them. His two stupid idiot boys. His reasons for existing. 

He stops at the base of a large oak tree and sighs. Tipping his face up to feel the spots of sunlight that peek through the treetops, he sees them. 

“I can’t believe you absolute lunatics.”

“You found us! Yeosangie, our perfect, perfect Familiar!”

“You are literally fucking in a tree,” Yeosang says, throwing his arms up in defeat. “Any of them could’ve found you for all the rustling and whining going on!”

“But they didn’t,” San points out, hand in Wooyoung’s pants and grin lighting up his face. 

“That’s right. You did. You felt our love calling to you, eh?” 

San moves his hand, and Wooyoung tips his head back against the tree trunk. “Coming up, baby?”

Yeosang sighs again. “We’re supposed to meet at the finish line.”

Wooyoung looks at San. San looks at Wooyoung. They turn to him and shrug. 

“Pride or Penises, Yeosangie. The choice is yours.”

“That’s absolute nonsense, I--”

San licks up the side of Wooyoung’s stretched tan throat, and Yeosang shivers, ignited. 

“Yeah, whatever, Pancake deserves it anyhow.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> follow me on twit @LikeSatellitez


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